Big Ben was beginning to strike, first the warning, musical; then the hour, irrevocable.

Habits gradually change the face of ones life as time changes one's physical face;& one does not know it.

Are they not criminals, books that have wasted our time and sympathy; are they not the most insidious enemies of society, corrupters, defilers, the writers of false books, faked books, books that fill the air with decay and disease?

The mind of man, moreover, works with equal strangeness upon the body of time. An hour, once it lodges in the queer element of the human spirit, may be stretched to fifty or a hundred times its clock length; on the other hand, an hour may be accurately represented on the timepiece of the mind by one second.

For what more terrifying revelation can there be than that it is the present moment? That we survive the shock at all is only possible because the past shelters us on one side and the future on another.

Meanwhile, let us abolish the ticking of time’s clock with one blow. Come closer.

… acolo, de-a curmezișul golfului și printre dune, zăcea prietenia lui, păstrîndu-și întreaga vitalitate și realitate, asemenea cadavrului unui tînăr care ar fi rămas îngropat un secol în turbă, conservîndu-și roșeața proaspătă a buzelor.

The large shiny black forehead of the first whale was no more than two yards from us when it sank beneath the surface of the water, then we saw the huge blue-black bulk glide quietly under the raft right beneath our feet. It lay there for some time, dark and motionless, and we held our breath as we looked down on the gigantic curved back of a mammal a good deal longer than the raft.

These are the soul's changes. I don't believe in ageing. I believe in forever altering one's aspect to the sun. Hence my optimism.