“…a lie, once uttered, changes reality just as surely as if it were a great truth.”

“The world is a sea in which we all must surely drown.”

“Under the force of the imagination, nature itself is changed.”

“Time. In another time. Either before or after. They were not stars,but fires. They were the souls of birds. They were entries into the vast fire. They were the eyes of the dead. And in the darkness theywere imprisoned by them.”

“There is no humiliation worse than the consciousness of a wasted life. It stains the spirit, forestalls hope, and destroys any motive foraction or change.”

“For when I trace back the years I have liv'd, gathering them up in my Memory, I see what a chequer'd Work Of Nature my life has been. If I were now to inscribe my own History with its unparalleled Sufferings and surprizing Adventures (as the Booksellers might indite it), I know that the great Part of the World would not believe the Passages there related, by reason of the Strangeness of them, but I cannot help their Unbelief; and if the Reader considers them to be but dark Conceits, then let him bethink himself that Humane life is quite out of the Light and that we are all Creatures of Darknesse.”

“I have liv'd long enough for others, like the Dog in the Wheel, and it is now the Season to begin for myself: I cannot change that Thing call'd Time, but I can alter its Posture and, as Boys do turn a looking-glass against the Sunne, so I will dazzle you all.”