The man who had died looked nakedly on life, and saw a vast resoluteness everywhere flinging itself up in stormy or subtle wave-crests.... always the man who had died saw not the bird alone, but the short, sharp wave of life of which the bird was the crest.

I'd be ashamed to see a woman walking around with my name-label on her, address and railway station, like a wardrobe trunk.

Democracy and equality try to denythe mystic recognition of difference and innate priority, the joy of obedience and the sacred responsibility of authority.

To the Puritan all things are impure, as somebody says.

Be sure your sins will find you out, especially if you're married and her name's Bertha

So as long as you can forget your body you are happy and the moment you begin to be aware of your body, you are wretched. So if civilization is any good, it has to help us forget our bodies, and then time passes happily without our knowing it. Help us get rid of our bodies altogether.

The novel is the highest form of human expression so far attained. Why? Because it is so incapable of the absolute.