You know, of course, that the Tasmanians, who never committed adultery, are now extinct.

He did not care upon what terms he satisfied his passion. He had even a mad, melodramatic idea to drug her.

I'm afraid you've thought me a bigger fool than I am.

As the cosmos are in place, so be it with your life.

She loved three things — a joke, a glass of wine, and a handsome man.

I don't understand anything. Life is so strange. I feel like some one who's lived all his life by a duck-pond and suddenly is shown the sea. It makes me a little breathless, and yet it fills me with elation. I don't want to die, I want to live. I'm beginning to feel a new courage. I feel like one of those old sailors who set sail for undiscovered seas and I think my soul hankers for the unknown.

Everyone had some defect, or body or of mind: he thought of all the people he had known (the whole world was like a sick house and there was no rhyme or reason in it), he saw a long procession, deformed in body, warped in mind, some with illness of the flesh, weak hearts or weak lungs, and some with illness of the spirit, languor of will, or craving for liquor. At that moment he felt a holy compassion for them all. …The words of the dying God crossed his memory: Forgive them, for they know not what they do.