"Youth is an intoxication without wine, someone says. Life is an intoxication. The only sober man is the melancholiac, who, disenchanted, looks at life, sees it as it really is, and cuts his throat. If..."
- W.N.P. Barbellion
"Suppose the hellfire of the orthodox really existed! We have no assurance that it does not! It seems incredible, but many incredible things are true. We do not know that God is not as cruel as a Spani..."
"When the sun grew too hot we went into the wood where waves of Bluebells dashed around the foot of the Oak in front of us... I never knew before, the delight of offering oneself up; I even longed for ..."
"Suffering does not only insulate. It drops its victim in an ocean desert where he sees men as distant ships passing. I not only feel alone, but very far away from you all."
"To forget the past so easily seems scarcely loyal to oneself. I am so selfishly absorbed in my present self that I have grown not to care a damn about that ever increasing collection of past selves- t..."
"An appetite for knowledge is apt to rush one off one's feet, like any other appetite if not curbed. I often stand in the in the centre of the Library here and think despairingly how impossible it is e..."
"The porter spends his days in the Library keeping strict vigil over this catacomb of books, passing along between the shelves and yet never paying heed to the almost audible susurrus of desire- the de..."