Exiting the Intellectual Depression through Thought

"You take the old Poets much too seriously, my young friend. You should not take old people who are already dead seriously. It does them injustice. We immortals do not like things to be taken seriously. We like joking. Seriousness, young man, is an accident of time. It consists, I don't mind telling you in confidence, in putting too high a value on time. I, too, once put too high a value on time. For that reason I wished to be a hundred years old. In eternity, however, there is not time, you see. Eternity is a mere moment, just long enough for a joke."

Steppenwolf
Herman Hesse