His very existence was improbable, inexplicable, and altogether bewildering. He was an insoluble problem. It was inconceivable how he had existed, how he had succeeded in getting so far, how he had managed to remain -- why he did not instantly disappear.

I sit down religiously every morning, I sit down for eight hours every day - and the sitting down is all.

A man's real life is that accorded to him in the thoughts of other men by reason of respect or natural love.

It seems to me I am trying to tell you a dream - making a vain attempt, because no relation of a dream can convey the dream-sensation, that commingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment in a tremor of struggling revolt, that notion of being captured by the incredible which is of the very essence of dreams.

I am afraid that if you want to go down into history you'll have to do something for it.

I found myself back in the sepulchral city resenting the sight of people hurrying through the streets to filch a little money from each other, to devour their infamous cookery, to gulp their unwholesome beer, to dream their insignificant and silly dreams. They trespassed upon my thoughts.

I couldn't have felt more of lonely desolation somehow, had I been robbed of a belief or had missed my destiny in life.