"Yet how strange a thing is the beauty of music! The brief beauty that the player brings into being transforms a given period of time into pure continuance; it is certain never to be repeated; like the existence of dayflies and other such short-lived creatures, beauty is a perfect abstraction and creation of life itself. Nothing is so similar to life as music."

The Temple of the Golden Pavilion ~ Yukio Mishima


"From that moment I have found my entertainment in this labor. I do not mean that this labor, this labor of preparation and self-development, has been my material support, for till now the achievement has consisted only in the bit of a Fragment, and in that I have not found material support, for I have laid out money on it. However, I cannot require that people should contribute money for having something made difficult, that in fact would be to increase the difficulty by a new difficulty, and when one takes medicine, one is accustomed rather to getting a douceur along with it. I am so far from failing to understand this, that if I were as I being a subjective author am not objectively convinced of the efficacy of the medicine I offer, and believed that it did not depend simply and solely upon the way in which it is used, so that the way is really the medicine, I should be the first to promise every single one of my readers collectively the prospect of taking part in a lottery of tasteful gifts, in order in this way to instill into them the strength and courage required for reading my books. If then it should happen that they who make everything easy were to perceive that they truly might profit by my bit of difficulty, lest the easiness become a dead calm; if in their profound emotion at having thus understood my effort, they should resolve to support me on the sly with financial contributions, this would be gladly accepted, and I would make an inviolable promise to keep it silent, lest humankind, from whom we unitedly derive gain and profit, should learn to know the true situation."

Becoming Subjective - Concluding Unscientific Postscript ~ Soren Kierkegaard