“She would have thought a woman would have died of shame. Instead of which, the shame died.”

Perhaps only people who are capable of real togetherness have that look of being alone in the universe. The others have a certain stickiness, they stick to the mass.

But the act, called the sexual act, is not for the depositing of seed. It is for leaping off into the unknown, as from a cliff’s edge, like Sappho into the sea.

For God’s sake, all of you, say spiteful things about me, then I shall know I mean something to you. Don’t say surgaries, or I’m done.

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.

Never was an age more sentimental, more devoid of real feeling, more exaggerated in false feeling, than our own.

If only there weren’t so many other people in the world,’ he said lugubriously.

She was always waiting, it seemed to be her forte.

That’s the place to get to – nowhere. One wants to wander away from the world’s somewheres, into our own nowhere.

I am part of the sun as my eye is of me. That I am part of the earth my feet know perfectly, and my blood is part of the sea.

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

Sometimes life takes hold of one, carries the body along, accomplishes one’s history, and yet is not real, but leaves oneself as it were slurred over.

The dead don’t die. They look on and help.

He knew that conscience was chiefly fear of society or fear of oneself.

It is a fine thing to establish one’s own religion in one’s heart, not to be dependent on tradition and second-hand ideals. Life will seem to you, later, not a lesser, but a greater thing.

How she hated words, always coming between her and her life: they did the ravishing, if anything did: ready-made words and phrases, sucking all the live-sap out of living things.

The beautiful pure freedom of a woman was infinitely more wonderful than any sexual love.

Can we not live without pleasure, who cannot but with pleasure die?

The constant assertion of belief is an indication of fear.

Where it is permissible both to die and not to die, it is an abuse of valour to die.

I did not get an opportunity to die for the country, but I have got an opportunity to live for the country.

In peace sons bury fathers, but war violates the order of nature, and fathers bury sons.

When my time comes, forget the wrong that I’ve done. Help me leave behind some reasons to be missed.

Life is a movie; death is a photograph.

You are willing to die, you coward, but not to live.