“Four months or so of torturing ecstasy in his society - of "pleasure girded about with pain." After that the blackness of unutterable night.”

“It is rarely that the pleasures of the imagination will compensate for the pain of sleeplessness,”

“People go on marrying because they can't resist natural forces, although many of them may know perfectly well that they are possibly buying a month's pleasure with a life's discomfort.”

“You, and those like you, take your fill of pleasure on earth by making the life of such as me bitter and black with sorrow; and then it is a fine thing, when you have had enough of that, to think of securing your pleasure in heaven by becoming converted!”

“What then? Joy-jaunts, impassioned flings, Love and its ecstasy, Will always have been great things, great things to me!”

“It was then that the ecstasy and the dream began, in which emotion was the matter of the universe, and matter but an adventitious intrusion likely to hinder you from spinning where you wanted to spin.”

“Her companion, also in black, appeared as a well-formed young woman about 18, completely possessed of that ephemeral precious essence youth, which is itself beauty, irrespective of complexion or contour.”