No preacher is listened to but time, which gives us the same train and turn of thought that elder people have in vain tried to put into our heads before.

We wish away whole years, and travel through time as through a country filled with many wild and empty wastes, which we would fain hurry over, that we may arrive at those several little settlements or imaginary points of rest which are dispersed up and down in it.

Years are nothing to me—they should be nothing to you. Who asked you to count them or to consider them? In the world of wild nature, time is measured by seasons only—the bird does not know how old it is—the rose tree does not count its birthdays!

In time history must become a fairy tale—it will become again what it was in the beginning.

This is Year Zero.