“silence is not weakness and decency is not pride”

“And there were other rocks that were like animals, creeping, horrible animals, putting out their tongues, and others were like words I could not say, and others like dead people lying on the grass. I went on among them, though they frightened me, and my heart was full of wicked song they put into it; and I wanted to make faces and twist myself about the way they did, and I went on and on a long way till at last I liked the rocks and they didn’t frighten me any more”

“We lead two lives, and the half of our soul is madness, and half heaven is lit by a black sun. I say I am a man, is the other that hides in me?”

“I knew I had looked into the eyes of a lost soul, Austin, the man's outward form remained, but all hell was within it.”

“I had to cast out a good many lines, though, before I got what I wanted, and when I landed the fish I did not for a moment suppose it was my fish. But I listened to what I was told out of a constitutional liking for useless information, and I found myself in possession of a very curious story, though, as I imagined, not the story I was looking for.”

“This then was English fiction, this was English criticism, and farce, after all, was but an ill-played tragedy.”

“Every branch of human knowledge, if traced up to its source and final principles, vanishes into mystery.”