Neanderthal man listened to stories, if one may judge by the shape of his skull. The primitive audience was an audience of shock-heads, gaping around the camp-fire, fatigued with contending against the mammoth or wooly-rhinoceros, and only kept awake by suspense. What would happen next? The novelist droned on, and as soon as the audience guessed what happened next, they either fell asleep or killed him.

Long books, when read, are usually overpraised, because the reader wishes to convince others and himself that he has not wasted his time.

Pity wraps the student of the past in an ambrosial cloud, and washes his limbs with eternal youth.

Let her go to Italy!" he cried. "Let her meddle with what she doesn't understand!

This desire to govern a woman -- it lies very deep, and men and women must fight it together.... But I do love you surely in a better way then he does." He thought. "Yes -- really in a better way. I want you to have your own thoughts even when I hold you in my arms.

At night, when the curtains are drawn and the fire flickers, my books attain a collective dignity.

Human relations are impossible. When they are real they are uncomfortable, and when they are comfortable they are unreal. It was for the journey into solitude that the human soul was created.