“When we really want to go for something better, we shall smash the old. Until then, any sort of proposal, or making proposals, is no more than a tiresome game for self-important people.”

“Every civilization when it loses its inner visionand its cleaner energy, falls into a new sort of sordidness,more vast and more stupendous than the old savage sort.An Augean stable of metallic filth.”

“When we get out of the glass bottle of our ego and when we escape like the squirrels in the cage of our personality and get into the forest again, we shall shiver with cold and fright. But things will happen to us so that we don’t know ourselves. Cool, unlying life will rush in.”

“Can you never like things without clutching them as if you wanted topull the heart out of them? Why don't you have a bit more restraint, orreserve, or something?"She looked up at him full of pain, then continued slowly to stroke herlips against a ruffled flower. Their scent, as she smelled it, was somuch kinder than he; it almost made her cry.”

“There was a warmth of fury in his last phrases. He meant she loved him more than he her. Perhaps he could not love her. Perhaps she had not in herself that which he wanted. It was the deepest motive of her soul, this self-mistrust. It was so deep she dared neither realise nor acknowledge. Perhaps she was deficient. Like an infinitely subtle shame, it kept her always back. If it were so, she would do without him. She would never let herself want him. She would merely see.”

“If we sip the wine, we find dreams coming upon us out of the imminent night”

“When along the pavement,Palpitating flames of life,People flicker around me,I forget my bereavement,The gap in the great constellation,The place where a star used to be”