“All conditioning aims at that: making people like their unescapable social destiny.” – Page 12
“No wonder those poor pre-moderns were mad and wicked and miserable. Their world didn’t allow them to take things easily, didn’t allow them to be sane, virtuous and happy. What with mothers and lovers, what with the prohibitions they were not conditioned to obey, what with the temptations and the lonely remorses, what with all the diseases and the endless isolating pain, what with the uncertainties and the poverty – they were forced to feel strongly. And feeling strongly (and strongly, what was more, in solitude, in hopelessly individual isolation), how could they be stable? – Page 35
“Feeling an outsider he behaved like one, which increased the prejudice against him and intensified the contempt and hostility aroused by his physical defects.” – Page 56
“Shutting her eyes she abandoned herself to their soft repeated thunder, allowed it to invade her consciousness more and more completely, till at last there was nothing left in the world but the one deep pulse of sound.” – Page 97
“One of the principal functions of a friend is to suffer (in milder and symbolic form) the punishments that we should like, but are unable, to inflict upon our enemies.” – Page 156
“He was a philosopher, if you know what that was. A man who dreams of fewer things than there are in heaven and earth.” – Page 204
“Yes, we inevitably turn to God; for this religious sentiment is of its nature so pure, so delightful to the soul that experiences it, that it makes up to us for all our other losses.”- Page 206
“For their sadness was the symptom of their love for one another.” – Page 214