“Our friends - how distant, how mute, how seldom visited and little known. AndI, too, am dim to my friends and unknown; a phantom, sometimes seen, oftennot. Life is a dream surely.”

“How curiously one is changed by the addition, even at a distance, of a friend. How useful an office one's friends perform when they recall us. Yet how painful to be recalled, to be mitigated, to have one's self adulterated, mixed up,become part of another.”

“Am I too fast, too facile? I do not know. I do not know myselfsometimes, or how to measure and name and count out thegrains that make me what I am.”

“Among the tortures and devestations of life is this then - our friends are not able to finish their stories.”

“There is no stability in this world. Who is to say what meaning there is in anything? Who is to foretell the flight of a word? It is a balloon that sails over tree-tops. To speak of knowledge is futile. All is experiment and adventure. We are forever mixing ourselves with unknown quantities. What is to come? I know not. But, as I put down my glass I remember; I am engaged to be married. I am to dine with my friends tonight. I am Bernard.”

“For I am more selves than Neville thinks. We are not as simple as our friends would have us to meet our needs. Yet love is simple.”

“How readily our thoughts swarm upon a new object, lifting it a little way, as ants carry a blade of straw so feverishly, and then leave it.”