There was a serenity about him always that had the look of innocence, when, technically, the word was no longer applicable.
But Sasha was from Russia, where the sunsets are longer, the dawns less sudden and sentences are often left unfinished from doubt as how to best end them.
Does Nature supplement what man advanced? Or does she complete what he began?
She thought there were no Gods; no one was to blame; and so she evolved this atheist’s religion of doing good for the sake of goodness.
A sort of transaction went on between them, in which she was on one side, and life was on another, and she was always trying to get the better of it, as it was of her.
Who would not spout the family teapot in order to talk with Keats for an hour about poetry, or with Jane Austen about the art of fiction?
In any case life is but a procession of shadows, and God knows why it is that we embrace them so eagerly, and see them depart with such anguish, being shadows.
The spring without a leaf to toss, bare and bright like a virgin fierce in her chastity, scornful in her purity, was laid out on fields wide-eyed and watchful and entirely careless of what was done or thought by the beholders.
It was a silly, silly dream, being unhappy.
The world wavered and quivered and threatened to burst into flames.
So that is marriage, Lily thought, a man and a woman looking at a girl throwing a ball.
Moments like this are buds on the tree of life. Flowers of darkness they are.
In the 18th century we knew how everything was done, but here I rise through the air, I listen to voices in America, I see men flying- but how is it done? I can’t even begin to wonder. So my belief in magic returns.
I do think all good and evil comes from words. I have to tune myself into a good temper with something musical, and I run to a book as a child to its mother.
The cold stream of visual impressions failed him now as if the eye were a cup that overflowed and let the rest run down its china walls unrecorded.
Would there be trees if we didn’t see them?
Am I a weed, carried this way, that way, on a tide that comes twice a day without a meaning?
All women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn, for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds.
Love and religion! thought Clarissa, going back into the drawing room, tingling all over. How detestable, how detestable they are!
Besides, in this random miscellaneous company we may rub against some complete stranger who will, with luck, turn into the best friend we have in the world.