“Over the white curve he had looked into incredible space; abysses of intelligence lay beyond it.”

“I will not seek it," the other replied. "It has been opened once and it is enough. And you -- are you sure that man can conquer until he has been wholly defeated? Are you sure that he can find plenitude till he has known utter despair? You will not let him despair of himself, but it may be that only in such a complete despair he finds that which cannot despair and is something other than man.”

“The girl was in fact so patient with the old lady that she had not yet noticed that she was never given an opportunity to be patient. She endured her own nature and supposed it to be the burden of another's.”

“There is no possible idea," Kenneth thought as he came onto the terrace, "to which the mind of man can't supply some damned alternative or other. Yet one must act.”

“She sat the sister of Arthur, the wife of Lotfour sons got by him, and one not.”

“Pardon,Periel, like Love, is only ours for fun: essentially we don't and can't.”

“Love was even more mathematical than poetry. It was the pure mathematics of the spirit.”