"But a democracy is bound in the end to be obscene, for it is composed of myriad disunited fragments, each fragment assuming to itself a false wholeness, a false individuality. Modern democracy is made up of millions of frictional parts all asserting their own wholeness."

"One sheds ones sickness in books- repeats and presents again ones emotions, to be master of them."

"For man, as for flower and beast and bird, the supreme triumph is to be most vividly, most perfectly alive."

"The only history is a mere question of one's struggle inside oneself. But that is the joy of it. One need neither discover Americas nor conquer nations, and yet one has as great a work as Columbus or Alexander, to do."

"The great virtue in life is real courage that knows how to face facts and live beyond them."

"Love is. the flower of life and blossoms unexpectedly and without law and must be plucked where it is found and enjoyed for the brief hour of its duration."

"God doesn't know things. He is things."

"All vital truth contains the memory of all that for which it is not true."

"But better die than live mechanically a life that is a repetition of repetitions."

"For God's sake, let us be mennot monkeys minding machinesor sitting with our tails curledwhile the machine amuses us, the radio or film or gramophone.Monkeys with a bland grin on our faces."

"It was like something lurking in the darkness within him...There is remained in the darkness, the great pain, tearing him at times, and then being silent."

"When we really want to go for something better, we shall smash the old. Until then, any sort of proposal, or making proposals, is no more than a tiresome game for self-important people."

"And in this passion for understanding her soul lay close to his, she had him all to herself. But he must be made abstract first."

"While we live let us live."

"There's always the hyena of morality at the garden gate, and the real wolf at the end of the street."

"Sentimentalism is the working off on yourself of feelings you haven't really got."

"Men! The only animal in the world to fear."

"I only want one thing of men, and that is, that they should leave me alone."

"It was very still. The tree was tall and straggling. It had thrown its briers over a hawthorn-bush, and its long streamers trailed thick, right down to the grass, splashing the darkness everywhere with great spilt stars, pure white. In bosses of ivory and in large splashed stars the roses gleamed on the darkness of foliage and stems and grass. Paul and Miriam stood close together, silent, and watched. Point after point the steady roses shone out to them, seeming to kindle something in their souls. The dusk came like smoke around, and still did not put out the roses."

"So he was always in the town at one place or another, drinking, knocking about with the men he knew. It really wearied him. He talked to barmaids, to almost any woman, but there was that dark, strained look in his eyes, as if he were hunting something.Everything seemed so different, so unreal. There seemed no reason why people should go along the street, and houses pile up in the daylight. There seemed no reason why these things should occupy the space, instead of leaving it empty. His friends talked to him: he heard the sounds, and he answered. But why there should be the noise of speech he could not understand."

"I can't bear art that you can walk round and admire. A book should be either a bandit or a rebel or a man in the crowd."

"I cannot cure myself of that most woeful of youth's follies - thinking that those who care about us will care for the things that mean much to us."

"The Moon! Artemis! the great goddess of the splendid past of men! Are you going to tell me she is a dead lump?"

"The profoundest of all sensualitiesis the sense of truthand the next deepest sensual experienceis the sense of justice."

"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."

"How beautiful maleness is, if it finds its right expression."

"Men always do leave off really thinking, when the last bit of wild animal dies in them."

"And Clifford the same. All that talk! All that writing! All that wild struggling to push himself forwards! It was just insanity. And it was getting worse, really maniacal.Connie felt washed-out with fear. But at least, Clifford was shifting his grip from her on to Mrs Bolton. He did not know it. Like many insane people, his insanity might be measured by the things he was not aware of, the great desert tracts in his consciousness."

"The fairest thing in nature, a flower, still has its roots in earth and manure."

"When I read Shakespeare I am struck with wonder that such trivial people should muse and thunder in such lovely language."

"All that we know is nothing, we are merely crammed wastepaper baskets, unless we are in touch with that which laughs at all our knowing."

"When one jumps over the edge, one is bound to land somewhere."

"Sleep is still most perfect, in spite of hygienists, when it is shared with a beloved. The warmth, the security and peace of soul, the utter comfort from the touch of the other, knits the sleep, so that it takes the body and soul completely in its healing."

"Every man who is acutely alive is acutely wrestling his own soul."

"Men are freest when they are most unconscious of freedom. The shout is a rattling of chains, always was."

"One realm we have never conquered: the pure present."

"Europe's the mayonnaise, but America supplies the good old lobster."

"But that is how men are! Ungrateful and never satisfied. When you don't have them they hate you because you won't; and when you do have them they hate you again, for some other reason. Or for no reason at all, except that they are discontented children, and can't be satisfied whatever they get, let a woman do what she may."

"Myth is an attempt to narrate a whole human experience, of which the purpose is too deep, going too deep in the blood and soul, for mental explanation or description."

"I am in love - and, my God, it is the greatest thing that can happen to a man. I tell you, find a woman you can fall in love with. Do it. Let yourself fall in love. If you have not done so already, you are wasting your life."

"Don't you find it a beautiful clean thought, a world empty of people, just uninterrupted grass, and a hare sitting up?"

"The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted."

"To be alive, to be man alive, to be whole man alive: that is the point. And at its best, the novel, and the novel supremely, can help you. It can help you not to be dead man in life."

"Time went on grey, uncloured, like a long journey where she sat unconscious as the landscape unrolled beside her."

"I should feel the air move against me, and feel the things I touched, instead of having only to look at them. I'm sure life is all wrong because it has become much too visual - we can neither hear nor feel nor understand, we can only see. I'm sure that is entirely wrong."

"The proper function of the critic is to save the tale from the artist who created it."

"Loud peace propaganda makes war seem imminent."

"The soul is a very perfect judge of her own motions, if your mind doesn't dictate to her."

"The one woman who never gives herself is your free woman, who is always giving herself."

"Humanity is a huge aggregate lie, and a huge lie is less than a small truth. Humanity is less, far less than the individual because the individual may sometimes be capable of truth, and humanity is a tree of lies. And they say that love is greatest thing, they persist in saying this, the foul liars, and just look at what they do (...It's a lie to say that love is greatest, what people want is hate - hate, and nothing but hate. And in the name of righteousness and love they get it...If we want hate, let us have it - death, murder, torture, violent destruction- let us have it: but not in the name of love."