“The soul must brave itself to endure.”

“Venerable are letters, infinitely brave, forlorn, and lost.”

“Women have sat indoors all these millions of years, so that by this time the very walls are permeated by their creative force, which has, indeed, so overcharged the capacity of bricks and mortar that it must needs harness itself to pens and brushes and business and politics.”

“And it was cowardly for a man to say he would kill himself, but Septimus had fought; he was brave; he was not Septimus now”

“It might be possible that the world itself is without meaning.”

“Books are the mirrors of the soul.”

“Yes, yes, I'm coming. Right up the top of the house. One moment I'll linger. How the mud goes round in the mind—what a swirl these monsters leave, the waters rocking, the weeds waving and green here, black there, striking to the sand, till by degrees the atoms reassemble, the deposit sifts itself, and a gain through the eyes one sees clear and still, and there comes to the lips some prayer for the departed, some obsequy for the souls of those one nods to, the one never meets again.”