“For nowadays the world is lit by lightning! Blow out your candles, Laura -- and so goodbye. . . .”

“Jim lights a cigarette and leans indolently back on his elbow smiling at Laura with a warmth and charm which lights her inwardly with altar candles.”

“Why, man alive, Laura! Just look about you a little. What do you see? A world full of common people! All of 'em born and all of em' going to die! Which of them has one-tenth of your good points! Or mine! Or anyone else's, as far as that goes - gosh! Everybody excels in some one thing. Some in many!”

“And then the searchlight which had been turned on the world was turned off again and never for one moment since has there been any light that's stronger than this-kitchen-candle...”

“Distant singing is heard. Ghostly voices become audible: fragments of lectures remembered, the finely distilled wisdom and passion of seers and poets with which the modern young mind is tempered for the world that blows it to pieces.”

“For there was a conspiracy of dullness in the world, a universal plan to shut out the resurgences of spirit which might interfere with clockwork. Better to keep your elevation unseen until it is higher than strangers' hands can reach to pull you down to their level.”

“It is almost as if you were frantically constructing another world while the world that you live in dissolves beneath your feet, and that your survival depends on completing this construction at least one second before the old habitation collapses.”