What is a “Stachelschweine” exactly? It seems to literally translate as a “spiky pig” which I think is great. If it were up to me, we’d stop right there. Most people, though, seem to have gone with porcupine, while a few seem to think it should be hedgehog. (But then it might get tangled up with Berlin’s fox and hedgehog… which would certainly end in chaos or, at the very least, hurt feelings all round.) Anyhow, whatever you want to call your spiky pigs, I think it’s excellent advice on how to get along with other humans.

Light flows our war of mocking words, and yet, 
Behold, with tears mine eyes are wet! 
I feel a nameless sadness o’er me roll. 
Yes, yes, we know that we can jest, 
We know, we know that we can smile;    
But there ‘s a something in this breast, 
To which thy light words bring no rest, 
And thy gay smiles no anodyne; 
Give me thy hand, and hush awhile, 
And turn those limpid eyes on mine,   
And let me read there, love! thy inmost soul. 
 
Alas! is even love too weak 
To unlock the heart, and let it speak? 
Are even lovers powerless to reveal 
To one another what indeed they feel?      
I knew the mass of men conceal’d 
Their thoughts, for fear that if reveal’d 
They would by other men be met 
With blank indifference, or with blame reprov’d; 
I knew they liv’d and mov’d      
Trick’d in disguises, alien to the rest 
Of men, and alien to themselves—and yet 
The same heart beats in every human breast. 
But we, my love—does a like spell benumb 
Our hearts—our voices?—must we too be dumb?    
 
Ah! well for us, if even we, 
Even for a moment, can get free 
Our heart, and have our lips unchain’d; 
For that which seals them hath been deep-ordain’d! 
 
Fate, which foresaw 
How frivolous a baby man would be,
By what distractions he would be possess’d, 
How he would pour himself in every strife, 
And well-nigh change his own identity;
That it might keep from his capricious play  
His genuine self, and force him to obey, 
Even in his own despite his being’s law, 
Bade through the deep recesses of our breast 
The unregarded River of our Life 
Pursue with indiscernible flow its way;  
And that we should not see 
The buried stream, and seem to be 
Eddying at large in blind uncertainty, 
Though driving on with it eternally. 
 
But often, in the world’s most crowded streets,   
But often, in the din of strife, 
There rises an unspeakable desire 
After the knowledge of our buried life, 
A thirst to spend our fire and restless force 
In tracking out our true, original course;    
A longing to inquire 
Into the mystery of this heart which beats 
So wild, so deep in us, to know 
Whence our lives come and where they go. 
And many a man in his own breast then delves,   
But deep enough, alas, none ever mines!
And we have been on many thousand lines, 
And we have shown, on each, spirit and power, 
But hardly have we, for one little hour, 
Been on our own line, have we been ourselves;     
Hardly had skill to utter one of all 
The nameless feelings that course through our breast, 
But they course on for ever unexpress’d. 
And long we try in vain to speak and act 
Our hidden self, and what we say and do      
Is eloquent, is well—but ‘tis not true! 
And then we will no more be rack’d 
With inward striving, and demand 
Of all the thousand nothings of the hour 
Their stupefying power;    
Ah yes, and they benumb us at our call! 
Yet still, from time to time, vague and forlorn, 
From the soul’s subterranean depth upborne 
As from an infinitely distant land, 
Come airs, and floating echoes, and convey     
A melancholy into all our day. 
Only—but this is rare— 
When a belovèd hand is laid in ours, 
When, jaded with the rush and glare 
Of the interminable hours,       
Our eyes can in another’s eyes read clear, 
When our world-deafen’d ear 
Is by the tones of a lov’d voice caress’d— 
A bolt is shot back somewhere in our breast 
And a lost pulse of feeling stirs again!      
The eye sinks inward, and the heart lies plain, 
And what we mean, we say, and what we would, we know, 
A man becomes aware of his life’s flow, 
And hears its winding murmur, and he sees 
The meadows where it glides, the sun, the breeze.
 
And there arrives a lull in the hot race 
Wherein he doth for ever chase 
The flying and elusive shadow, Rest. 
An air of coolness plays upon his face, 
And an unwonted calm pervades his breast.
And then he thinks he knows 
The hills where his life rose, 
And the Sea where it goes.

Her mind lives in a quiet room,
A narrow room, and tall,
With pretty lamps to quench the gloom
And mottoes on the wall.

There all the things are waxen neat,
And set in decorous lines;
And there are posies, round and sweet,
And little, straightened vines.

Her mind lives tidily, apart
From cold and noise and pain,
And bolts the door against her heart,
Out wailing in the rain.

I am often filled with wonder when I see some men demanding the time of others and those from whom they ask it most indulgent. Both of them fix their eyes on the object of the request for time, neither of them on the time itself; just as if what is asked were nothing, what is given, nothing.

Men trifle with the most precious thing in the world; but they are blind to it because it is an incorporeal thing, because it does not come beneath the sight of the eyes, and for this reason it is counted a very cheap thing—nay, of almost no value at all.

Men set very great store by pensions and doles, and for these they hire out their labour or service or effort. But no one sets a value on time; all use it lavishly as if it cost nothing. But see how these same people clasp the knees of physicians if they fall ill and the danger of death draws nearer, see how ready they are, if threatened with capital punishment, to spend all their possessions in order to live!

So great is the inconsistency of their feelings. But if each one could have the number of his future years set before him as is possible in the case of the years that have passed, how alarmed those would be who saw only a few remaining, how sparing of them would they be! And yet it is easy to dispense an amount that is assured, no matter how small it may be; but that must be guarded more carefully which will fail you know not when.

read: On the Shortness of Life by Seneca