# Quote — Ernst Jünger, The Glass Bees

> A work of art wastes away and becomes lustreless in surroundings where it has a price but not a value. It radiates only when surrounded by love. It is bound to wilt in a world where the rich have no time and the cultivated no money. But it never harmonizes with borrowed greatness.

- Author: [Ernst Jünger](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ernst-junger.md)
- Book: [The Glass Bees](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ernst-junger/the-glass-bees.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ernst_J%C3%BCnger#The_Glass_Bees_(1957)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/ernst-junger/the-glass-bees/a-work-of-art

## More from this book

> Today only the person who no longer believes in a happy ending, only he who has consciously renounced it, is able to live. A happy century does not exist; but there are moments of happiness, and there is freedom in the moment.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ernst-junger/the-glass-bees/today-only-the.md)

> Human perfection and technical perfection are incompatible. If we strive for one, we must sacrifice the other: there is, in any case, a parting of the ways. Whoever realises this will do cleaner work one way or the other.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ernst-junger/the-glass-bees/human-perfection-and.md)

> All the systems which explain so precisely why the world is as it is and why it can never be otherwise, have always called forth in me the same kind of uneasiness one has when face to face with the regulations displayed under the glaring lights of a prison cell. Even if one had been born in prison and had never seen the stars or seas or woods, one would instinctively know of timeless freedom in unlimited space.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ernst-junger/the-glass-bees/all-the-systems.md)