“And soon all our minds will be flat as a pancake,With no room for genius exaltation or heartache.And our children and theirs will preen, smirk and chatter,With not even the sense to ask what is the matter.”

“Children who paddle where the ocean bed shelves steeplyMust take great care they do not, Paddle too deeply.'Thus spake the awful aging coupleWhose heart the years had turned to rubble.But the little children, to save any bother,Let it in at one ear and out at the other.”

“There are moments of despair that come sometimes, when night sets in and a white fog presses against the windows. Then our house changes its shape, rears up and becomes a place of despair. Then fear and rage run simply--and the thought of Death as a friend. This is the simplest of thoughts, that Death must come when we call, although he is a god.”

“But one wants the idea of Death, you know, as something large and unknowable, something that allows a person to stretch himself out. Especially one wants it if one is tired. Or perhaps what one wants is simply a release from sensation, from all consciousness for ever....”

“Hope and desire,All unfulfilled,Have more than ropeAnd hangman killed.”

“Oh Lion in a peculiar guise,Sharp Roman road to Paradise,Come eat me up, I'll pay thy tollWith all my flesh, and keep my soul.”

“These thoughts are depressing I know. They are depressing, I wish I was more cheerful, it is more pleasant,Also it is a duty, we should smile as well as submitting To the purpose of One Above who is experimentingWith various mixtures of human character which goes best, All is interesting for him it is exciting, but not for us. There I go again. Smile, smile, and get some work to doThen you will be practically unconscious without positively having to go.”