“Yet in truth you spoke not of her but of needs unsatisfied,”

“All these things have you said of beauty. Yet in truth you spoke not of her but of needs unsatisfied, And beauty is not a need but an ecstasy. It is not a mouth thirsting nor an empty hand stretched forth, But rather a heart enflamed and a soul enchanted. It is not the image you would see nor the song you would hear, But rather an image you see though you close your eyes and a song you hear though you shut your ears. It is not the sap within the furrowed bark, nor a wing attached to a claw, But rather a garden for ever in bloom and a flock of angels for ever in flight. People of Orphalese, beauty is life when life unveils her holy face. But you are life and you are the veil. Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror. But you are eternity and your are the mirror.”

“‎Love is a madness produced by an unsatisfiable rational desire to understand the ultimate truth about the world.”

“Just because other people think something, that doesn't make it true.Maybe there's some truth in that, but it's unsatisfying, bitter-tasting truth.”

“How easily they spoke of love. And yet, when she'd needed the certainty of his feeling for her, he'd let her slip away, never able to bring himself to tell her about the ways in which he'd been changed. He'd been incapable he'd let Nenebah believe the problem lay with her.”

“Extreme poverty is not only a condition of unsatisfied material needs. It is often accompanied by a degrading state of powerlessness. ”