"Part of this feeling is a claim made by the heart and a rejection, if I may call it that, on the part of nature. But this is impossible in front of the picture, and what I should have found in the picture itself I found only between myself and the picture, namely a claim my heart made on the picture and the picture's rejection of me; and so I myself became the monk, and the picture became the dune, but the sea itself, on which I should have looked out with longing — the sea was absent."

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Added on April 10, 2026
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Original Language: English

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Clemens Brentano

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Caspar_David_Friedrich