I was not given to looking at life in a rosy light.- Georg Brandes
I was not afraid of what I did not like. To overcome dislike of a thing often satisfied one's feeling of honour.
I was at home then in the world of figures, but not in that of values.
I was always hearing that I was pale and thin and small.
I was a town child, it is true, but that did not prevent me enjoying open-air life, with plants and animals.
I encountered among my comrades the most varied human traits, from frankness to reserve, from goodness, uprightness and kindness, to brutality and baseness.
I did not know what it was to be happy for a whole day at a time, scarcely for an hour.
I came into the world two months too soon, I was in such a hurry.
I became an ardent, but never a specially good, dancer.
I admired in others the strength that I lacked myself.
He who does not understand a joke, he does not understand Danish.
But when I was twelve years old I caught my first strong glimpse of one of the fundamental forces of existence, whose votary I was destined to be for life - namely, Beauty.
But my doubt would not be overcome. Kierkegaard had declared that it was only to the consciousness of sin that Christianity was not horror or madness. For me it was sometimes both.
But I did not find any positive inspiration in my studies until I approached my nineteenth year.
Birth was something that came quite unexpectedly, and afterwards there was one child more in the house.
