Once you fall, Septimus repeated to himself, human nature is on you. Holmes and Bradshaw are on you. They scour the desert. They fly screaming into the wilderness. The rack and the thumbscrew are applied. Human nature is remorseless.
The first duty of a lecturer: to hand you after an hour's discourse a nugget of pure truth to wrap up between the pages of your notebooks, and keep on the mantelpiece forever.
It is no use trying to sum people up.
Among the tortures and devestations of life is this then - our friends are not able to finish their stories.
There was no freedom in life, and certainly there was none in death.
The best letters of our time are precisely those that can never be published.
To let oneself be carried on passively is unthinkable.
madam," the man cried, leaping to the ground, "you're hurt!" "I'm dead, sir!" she replied. A few minutes later, they became engaged.
As an experience, madness is terrific ... and in its lava I still find most of the things I write about.
One must love everything.
... why do people who live in the country always give themselves such airs?
The history of most women is hidden either by silence, or by flourishes and ornaments that amount to silence.
You cannot lecture on really pure poetry any more than you can talk about the ingredients of pure water-it is adulterated, methylated, sanded poetry that makes the best lectures.
Some collaboration has to take place in the mind between the woman and the man before the art of creation can be accomplished. Some marriage of opposites has to be consummated. The whole of the mind must lie wide open if we are to get the sense that the
I find that when I've seen a certain number of people my mind becomes like an old match box -- the part one strikes on, I mean.
[Final diary entry:] Occupation is essential. And now with some pleasure I find that it's seven; and must cook dinner. Haddock and sausage meat. I think it is true that one gains a certain hold on sausage and haddock by writing them down.
Sir, I would trust you with my heart. Moreover, we have left our bodies in the banqueting hall. Those on the turf are the shadows of our souls.
I have a feeling I shall go mad. I cannot go on longer in these terrible times. I shan't recover this time. I hear voices and cannot concentrate on my work. I have fought against it but cannot fight any longer.
The world was going on as usual. All the time she was writing the world had continued.
I have had my vision.
Old Madame du Deffand and her friends talked for fifty years without stopping. And of it all, what remains? Perhaps three witty sayings. So that we are at liberty to suppose either that nothing was said, or that nothing witty was said, or that the fraction of three witty sayings lasted eighteen thousand two hundred and fifty nights, which does not leave a liberal allowance of wit for any one of them.
Boredom is the legitimate kingdom of the philanthropic.
To enjoy freedom ... we have of course to control ourselves. We must not squander our powers, helplessly and ignorantly, squirting half the house in order to water a single rose.
Still, the sun was hot. Still, one got over things. Still, life had a way of adding day to day
Nothing induces me to read a novel except when I have to make money by writing about it. I detest them.
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