And in this case his great practice in it was assisted by hate, which, like love, has an eloquence of its own.
And for a moment it seemed to me as if I also were buried in a vast grave full of unspeakable secrets.
I was anxious to deal with this shadow by myself alone – and to this day I don’t know why I was so jealous of sharing with any one the peculiar blackness of that experience.
I don’t like work – no man does – but I like what is in the work – the chance to find yourself.
The fascination of the abomination – you know.
I saw him open his mouth wide – it gave him a weirdly voracious aspect, as though he had wanted to swallow all the air, all the earth, all the men before him.
Man, we know, cannot live by bread alone but hang me if I don’t believe that some women could live by love alone.
One rule holds good of most young men – whether rich or poor. They never have money for the necessaries of life, but they have always money to spare for their caprices – an anomaly which finds its explanation in their youth and in the almost frantic eagerness with which youth grasps at pleasure.
We wander in our thousands over the face of the earth, the illustrious and the obscure, earning beyond the seas our fame, our money, only a crust of bread; but it seems to me that for each of us going home must be like going to render an account.
The day was ending in a serenity of still and exquisite brilliance. The water shone pacifically; the sky, without a speck, was a benign immensity of unstained light; the very mist on the Essex marshes was like a gauzy and radiant fabric, hung from the wooded rises inland, and draping the low shores in diaphanous folds. Only the gloom to the west, brooding over the upper reaches, became more sombre every minute, as if angered by the approach of the sun.
The word ‘ivory’ rang in the air, was whispered, was sighed. You would think they were praying to it.
I was glad of it,” he repeated, emphatically. “You may be surprised at it, but then you haven’t gone through the experience I’ve had of her. I can tell you, it was something to remember. Of course, I got off scot free myself – as you can see. She did her best to break up my pluck for me tho’. She jolly near drove as fine a fellow as ever lived into a madhouse. What do you say to that – eh?
Men who come out here should have no entrails.
I have attempted to tear asunder the veil you have hung to conceal from us the pain of life, and I have been wounded by the mystery... Oedipus, half way to finding the word of the enigma, young Faust, regretting already the simple life, the life of the heart, I come back to you repentant, reconciled, O gentle deceiver!
He was easily sorry for people.
It was solemn, and a little ridiculous too, as they always are, those struggles of an individual trying to save from the fire his idea of what his moral identity should be, this precious notion of a convention, only one of the rules of the game, nothing more, but all the same so terribly effective by its assumption of unlimited power over natural instincts, by the awful penalties of its failure.
His need was to exist, and to move onwards at the greatest possible risk, and with maximum of privation. If the absolutely pure, uncalculating, unpractical spirit of adventure had ever ruled a human being, it ruled this bepatched youth.
From afar at the end of Tsar Peter Straat, issued in the frosty air the tinkle of bells of the horse tramcars, appearing and disappearing in the opening between the buildings, like little toy carriages harnessed with toy horses and played with by people that appeared no bigger than children.
Are not our lives too short for that full utterance which through all our stammerings is of course our only and abiding intention? I have given up expecting those last words, whose ring, if they could only be pronounced, would shake both heaven and earth. There is never time to say our last word – the last word of our love, of our desire, faith, remorse, submission, revolt. The heaven and earth must not be shaken. I suppose – at least, not by us who know so many truths about either.
Sometimes it seems to me that man is come where he is not wanted, where there is no place for him; for if not, why should he want all the place? Why should he run about here and there making a great noise about himself, talking about the stars, disturbing the blades of grass?