Back to Methuselah

"In truth, mankind cannot be saved from without, by schoolmasters or any other sort of masters: it can only be lamed and enslaved by them. It is said that if you wash a cat it will never again wash itself. This may or may not be true: what is certain is that if you teach a man anything he will never learn it; and if you cure him of a disease he will be unable to cure himself the next time it attacks him."

"Life must not cease. That comes before everything. It is silly to say you do not care. You do care. It is that care that will prompt your imagination; inflame your desires; make your will irresistible; and create out of nothing."

"Any sort of plain speaking is better than the nauseous sham good fellowship our democratic public men get up for shop use."

"Make me a beautiful word for doing things tomorrow; for that surely is a great and blessed invention."

"You can feel nothing but a torment, and believe nothing but a lie. You will not raise your head to look at all the miracles of life that surround you; but you will run ten miles to see a fight or a death."

"I enjoy convalescence. It is the part that makes illness worth while."

"I hear you say "Why?" Always "Why?" You see things; and you say "Why?" But I dream things that never were; and I say "Why not?"

"Conceive. That is the word that means both the beginning in imagination and the end in creation."

": The voice in the garden is your own voice. : It is; and it is not. It is something greater than me: I am only a part of it. : The Voice does not tell me not to kill you. Yet I do not want you to die before me. No voice is needed to make me feel that. [throwing his arm round her shoulder with an expression of anguish]: Oh no: that is plain without any voice. There is something that holds us together, something that has no word — : Love. Love. Love. : That is too short a word for so long a thing."

"I am very subtle; but Man is deeper in his thought than I am. The woman knows that there is no such thing as nothing: the man knows that there is no such day as tomorrow. I do well to worship them."

"I make no vows. I take my chance. ... It means that I fear certainty as you fear uncertainty. It means that nothing is certain but uncertainty. If I bind the future I bind my will. If I bind my will I strangle creation."

"I worship you, Eve. I must have something to worship. Something quite different to myself, like you. There must be something greater than the snake."