It [Mexico] is a country where men despise sex, and live for it,' said Ramón. 'Which is suicide.' |
It is a fine thing to establish one's own religion in one's heart, not to be dependant on tradition adn second-hand ideals. Life will seem to you, later, not a lesser, but a greater thing. |
It is all a question of sensitiveness. Brute force and overbearing may make a terrific effect. But in the end, that which lives by delicate sensitiveness. If it were a question of brute force, not a single human baby would survive for a fortnight. It is the grass of the field, most frail of all things, that supports all life all the time. But for the green grass, no empire would rise, no man would eat bread: for grain is grass; and Hercules or Napoleon or Henry Ford would alike be denied existence. |
It is as if the life had retreated eastwards. As if the Germanic life were slowly ebbing away from contact with western Europe, ebbing to the deserts of the east. |
It is no good casting out devils. They belong to us, we must accept them and be at peace with them. |
It is not a pleasant epoch in one's life - the first forty eight hours at a large public school |
It is so much more difficult to live with one's body than with one's soul. One's body is so much more exacting: what it won't have it won't have, and nothing can make bitter into sweet. |
It ought to be lovely to be old, To be full of the peace that comes with experience And wrinkled ripe fulfillment |
It was cold, and he was coughing. A fine cold draught blew over the knoll. He thought of the woman. Now he would have given all he had or ever might have to hold her warm in his arms, both of them wrapped in one blanket, and sleep. All hopes of eternity and all gain from the past he would have given to have her there, to be wrapped warm with him in one blanket, and sleep, only sleep. It seemed the sleep with the woman in his arms was the only necessity. |
It's all this cold-hearted fucking that is death and idiocy. |
It's bad taste to be wise all the time, like being at a perpetual funeral |
John Thomas says goodnight to Lady Jane, a little droopingly, but with a hopeful heart |
Life and love are life and love, a bunch of violets is a bunch of violets, and to drag in the idea of a point is to ruin everything. Live and let live, love and let love, flower and fade, and follow the natural curve, which flows on, pointless. |
Literary criticism can be no more than a reasoned account of the feeling produced upon the critic by the book he is criticizing. Criticism can never be a science: it is, in the first place, much too personal, and in the second, it is concerned with values that science ignores. The touchstone is emotion, not reason. We judge a work of art by its effect on our sincere and vital emotion, and nothing else. All the critical twiddle-twaddle about style and form, all this pseudoscientific classifying and analyzing of books in an imitation-botanical fashion, is mere impertinence and mostly dull jargon. |
Literature is a toil and a snare, a curse that bites deep. |