“It is, perhaps, a better thing to be valued only as an object of passion than never to be valued at all. I had never been so absolutely the mysterious other. I had become a kind of phoenix, a fabulous beast; I was an outlandish jewel.”
“If there was one thing I had never been, it was mysterious, and if there was one thing I had never done, it was not talk.”
“From childhood I had never believed in permanence, and yet I had longed for it. Always I was afraid of losing happiness. This month, next year...death was the only absolute value in my world. Lose life and one would lose nothing again forever.”
“I had to learn to value myself before I could expect to be valued by others”
“Valuing is creating: hear it, you creators! Valuing itself is the treasure and jewel of all valued things.”
“On the whole, though I never arrived at the perfection I had been so ambitious of obtaining, but fell far short of it, yet as I was, by the endeavor, a better and a happier man than I otherwise should have been had I not attempted it”