I am by nature an optimist and by intellectual conviction a pessimist.
People don’t help much.
What are we? Humans? Or animals? Or savages?
The mask was a thing on it’s own, behind which Jack hid, liberated from shame and self-conciousness.
The trouble was, if you were a chief you had to think, you had to be wise.
Roger stooped, picked up a stone, aimed and threw it at Henry-threw it to miss. The stone, that token of preposterous time, bounced five yards to Henry’s right and fell in the water. Roger gathered a handful of stones and began to throw them. Yet there was a space round Henry, perhaps six yards in diameter, into which he dare not throw. Here, invisible yet strong, was the taboo of the old life. Round the squatting child was the protection of parents and school and policemen and the law. Roger was conditioned by a civilization that knew nothing of him and was in ruins.
Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill! You knew, didn’t you?′ said the head. For a moment or two the forest and all the other dimly appreciated places echoed with the parody of laughter. ‘You knew, didn’t you? I’m part of you? Close, close, close! I’m the reason why it’s no go? Why things are what they are?
Whatever you give a woman, she will make greater. If you give her sperm, she’ll give you a baby. If you give her a house, she’ll give you a home. If you give her groceries, she’ll give you a meal. If you give her a smile, she’ll give you her heart. She multiplies and enlarges what is given to her.
I’m frightened. Of us.
As long as there’s light we’re brave enough.
Suddenly, pacing by the water, he was overcome with astonishment. He found himself understanding the wearisomeness of this life, where every path was an improvisation and a considerable amount of one’s waking life was spent watching one’s feet.
The sun in the west was a drop of burning gold that slid nearer and nearer the sill of the world. All at once they were aware of the evening as the end of light and warmth.
The moral is that the shape of a society must depend on the ethical nature of the individual and not on any political system however apparently logical or respectable.
Allow me to tell you, Mr Taylor,” said I, but quietly as the occasion demanded, “that one gentleman does not rejoice at the misfortune of another in public”.
The sun in the west was a drop of burning gold that slid nearer and nearer the sill of the world.
If you don’t change your hairstyle because it’s mostly fallen out and you don’t shave, you’ve no cause to go chasing yourself in a mirror.
Sleep is where we touch what is better left unexamined. There, the whole of life is bundled up, dwindled. There the carefully hoarded and enjoyed personality, our only treasure and at the same time our only defense must die into the ultimate truth of things, the black lightning that splits and destroys all, the positive, unquestionable nothingness.
Piggy once more was the centre of social derision so that everyone felt cheerful and normal.
With lack of sleep and too much understanding I grow a little crazy, I think, like all men at sea who live too close to each other and too close thereby to all that is monstrous under the sun and moon.
The air was heavy with unspoken knowledge.