I don’t even know why I remembered this book, considering I was never too much into classics. But I thought with its content, it might be good fir for the gloomy November days. It was. I took my time with reading it, but enjoyed it all the same. There’s no better time in the year for reading a book about vanity, sinfulness, guilt and regret than it was now.

Since I doubt the point of doing reviews of classics that are well know, this is going to be more like a jumble of highlights and thoughts.

The Academy is too large and too vulgar. Whenever I have gone there, there have been either so many people that I have not been able to see the pictures, which was dreadful, or so many pictures that I have not been able to see the people, which was worse.

One thing that comes as nice coincidence is that the day I finished reading it, I was in a museum. It was about passage and measurement of time, but that’s probably not as relevant. I was there with maybe 4-5 people, so it was almost perfect. I could enjoy it at my own pace. Yes, it was an extreme, but I think it fits.

As it was, we always misunderstood ourselves and rarely understood others. Experience was of no ethical value. It was merely the name men gave to their mistakes.

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But there was no motive power in experience. It was as little of an active cause as conscience itself. All that it really demonstrated was that our future would be the same as our past, and that the sin we had done once, and with loathing, we would do many times, and with joy.

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Our weakest motives were those of whose nature we were conscious. It often happened that when we thought we were experimenting on others we were really experimenting on ourselves.

Trio from roughly quarter in the book. Nice description of the fact that repeated mistake is regretted less. And to this day, I often feel like I am experimenting on myself way too much.

When we blame ourselves, we feel that no one else has a right to blame us. It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution.

Another significant truth. When I was a kid and visiting my psychiatrist every few months, it was not as much about what I was told, at least not at that point as I learned from it much later, but the fact that I got my troubles out of me. It was the best way to make peace with what happened to me.

I remember your saying once that there is a fatality about good resolutions—that they are always made too late.

This probably doesn’t even need a comment.

I guess that’s it for this time, my semi-organized jumble of thoughts is over.