“The real novelist, the perfectly simple human being, could go on, indefinitely imaging. ”

“It is as if Emily Brontë could tear up all that we know human beings by, and fill these unrecognizable transparencies with such a gust of life that they transcend reality.”

“It is impossible for human beings, constituted as they are, both to fight and to have ideals.”

“He was afraid he did not understand beauty apart form human beings.”

“We do not know our own souls, let alone the souls of others. Human beings do not go hand in hand the whole stretch of the way. There is a virgin forest in each; a snowfield where even the print of birds' feet is unknown. Here we go alone, and like it better so. Always to have sympathy, always to be accompanied, always to be understood would be intolerable.”

“But he could not taste, he could not feel. In the teashop among the tables and the chattering waiters the appalling fear came over him- he could not feel. He could reason; he could read, Dante for example, quite easily…he could add up his bill; his brain was perfect; it must be the fault of the world then- that he could not feel.”

“My notion's to think of the human beings first and let the abstract ideas take care of themselves.”