“Embryos think with each stage of their development that they have now reached the only condition that really suits them. This, they say, must certainly be their last, inasmuch as its close will be so great a shock that nothing can survive it. Every change is a shock; every shock is a pro tanto death. What we call death is only a shock great enough to destroy our power to recognize a past and a present as resembling one another. ”

“For what more terrifying revelation can there be than that it is the present moment? That we survive the shock at all is only possible because the past shelters us on one side and the future on another.”

“It is a great danger for everyone when what is shocking changes.”

“I think that it can be assumed that no adults are ever really 'shocked' - that being shocked is always a pose.”

“A great deal has been written about the forthrightness of the moderns shocking the Victorians, but there is no shock like the one which the forthrightness of the Victorians can give a modern.”

“Listen to the speeches, one after another telling the audience what it already knows, evoking applause with necessary cliches, no longer shocking anybody with the shocking facts of the war because you can become so jaded with horror that you develop an emotional callous.”