Until that time, her betrayals had filled her with excitement and joy, because they opened up new paths to new adventures of betrayal.  But what if the paths came to an end?  One could betray one's parents, husband, country, love, but when parents, husband, country, and love were gone - what was left to betray?

The very beginning of Genesis tells us that God created man in order to give him dominion over fish and fowl and all creatures.  Of course, Genesis was written by a man, not a horse.  There is no certainty that God actually did grant man dominion over other creatures.  What seems more likely, in fact, is that man invented God to sanctify the dominion that he had usurped for himself over the cow and the horse.  Yes, the right to kill a deer or a cow is the only thing all of mankind can agree upon, even during the bloodiest of wars.

Perhaps the reason we are unable to love is that we yearn to be loved, that is, we demand something (love) from our partner instead of delivering ourselves up to him demand-free and asking for nothing but his company.

And therein lies the whole of man's plight.   Human time does not turn in a circle; it runs ahead in a straight line.  That is why man cannot be happy: happiness is the longing for repetition.

But is not an event in fact more significant and noteworthy the greater the number of fortuities necessary to bring it about?  [...] Everything that occurs out of necessity, everything expected, repeated day in and day out, is mute.  Only chance can speak to us

Without realizing it, the individual composes his life according to the laws of beauty even in times of greatest distress.  It is wrong then, to chide the novel for being fascinated by mysterious coincidences, but it is right to chide man for being blind to such coincidences in his daily life.  For he thereby deprives his life of a dimension of beauty.

Einmal ist keinmal, says Tomas to himself.  What happens but once, says the German adage, might as well not have happened at all.  If we have only one life to live, we might as well not have lived at all.