Spitta monologue (Act 1) — The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann, Volume II

And you shall not be disappointed, dearest. You see, a man like me in whom everything is still in a ferment, who feels that he was born to achieve something great and significant but something which, for the present, he can make sufficiently clear neither to himself nor to the world--such a man has, at twenty, every man's hand against his and is a burden and a laughing-stock to all the world. But believe me: it will not always be so! The germs of the future lie in us! The soil is being loosened even now by the budding shoots! Unseen to-day, _we_ are the harvest of the future! We _are_ the future! And the time will come when all this great and beautiful world will be ours!