You’re spending your life without renewing it. You’ve got to be amused, properly healthily amused. You’re spending your vitality without making any. Can’t go on you know. Depression! Avoid depression!
She was always waiting, it seemed to be her forte.
It’s not art for art’s sake, it’s art for my sake.
Sometimes life takes hold of one, carries the body along, accomplishes one’s history, and yet is not real, but leaves oneself as it were slurred over.
And that is how we are. By strength of will we cut off our inner intuitive knowledge from admitted consciousness. This causes a state of dread, or apprehension, which makes the blow ten times worse when it does fall.
All hopes of eternity and all gain from the past he would have given to have her there, to be wrapped warm with him in one blanket, and sleep, only sleep. It seemed the sleep with the woman in his arms was the only necessity.
But the act, called the sexual act, is not for the depositing of seed. It is for leaping off into the unknown, as from a cliff’s edge, like Sappho into the sea.
Be sure your sins will find you out, especially if you’re married and her name’s Bertha.
He knew that conscience was chiefly fear of society or fear of oneself.
I got the blues thinking of the future, so I left off and made some marmalade. It’s amazing how it cheers one up to shred orange and scrub the floor.
The feelings I don’t have I don’t have. The feelings I don’t have, I won’t say I have. The felings you say you have, you don’t have. The feelings you would like us both to have, we neither of us have.
The American grips himself, at the very sources of his consciousness, in a grip of care: and then, to so much of the rest of life, is indifferent. Whereas, the European hasn’t got so much care in him, so he cares much more for life and living.
Sleep is still most perfect, in spite of hygienists, when it is shared with a beloved.
Give up bearing children and bear hope and love and devotion to those already born.
Good God, what does it matter? If life is a tragedy, or a farce, or a disaster, or anything else, what do I care! Let life be what it likes. Give me a drink, that’s what I want just now.
The fairest thing in nature, a flower, still has its roots in earth and manure.
How ravished one could be without ever being touched. Ravished by dead words become obscene and dead ideas become obsessions.
She had borne so long this cruelty of belonging to him and not being claimed by him.
The human being is a most curious creature. He thinks he has got one soul, and he has got dozens.
And woman is the same as horses: two wills act in opposition inside her. With one will she wants to subject herself utterly. With the other she wants to bolt, and pitch her rider to perdition.