Feel, feel, I say – feel for all you’re worth, and even if it half kills you, for that is the only way to live.
There are two kinds of taste in the appreciation of imaginative literature: the taste for emotions of surprise and the taste for emotions of recognition.
I have a household of good books, and reading tends to take for me the place of experience – or rather to become itself experience concentrated. You will say this is a dull picture, but I cultivate dulness in a world grown too noisy.
Living as he now lived was like reading a good book in a poor translation...
We work in the dark – we do what we can – we give what we have.
The whole of anything, is never told.
Our relation, all round, exists – it’s a reality, and a very good one; we’re mixed up, so to speak, and it’s too late to change it. We must live IN it and with it.
The real offense, as she ultimately perceived, was in having a mind of her own at all.