One ought to sink to the bottom of the sea, probably, and live alone with one's words.

Love and religion! thought Clarissa, going back into the drawing room, tingling all over. How detestable, how detestable they are!

The poet gives us his essence, but prose takes the mould of the body and mind entire.

That would be a glorious life, to addict oneself to perfection; to follow the curve of the sentence wherever it might lead, into deserts, under drifts of sand, regardless of lures, of seductions; to be poor always and unkempt; to be ridiculous in Piccadilly.

And in me too the wave rises. It swells; it arches its back. I am aware once more of a new desire, something rising beneath me like the proud horse whose rider first spurs and then pulls him back. What enemy do we now perceive advancing against us, you whom I ride now, as we stand pawing this stretch of pavement? It is death. Death is the enemy. It is death against whom I ride with my spear couched and my hair flying back like a young man's, like Percival's, when he galloped in India. I strike spurs into my horse. Against you I will fling myself, unvanquished and unyielding, O Death!

The eyes of others our prisons; their thoughts our cages.

The older one grows, the more one likes indecency.