It was one of those moments when the pre-birth stirrings of a ghastly idea are huddled and swaddled in an ominous silence. Certain thoughts, that hav… - John Cowper Powys

Instead of pausing in our multifarious activities, instead of putting aside our laborious quests, we are being perpetually fooled into thinking that happiness is to be reached in the same way as pleasure is, by the possession of something.

One always feels that a merely educated man holds his philosophical views as if they were so many pennies in his pocket. They are separate from his life. Whereas with a cultured man there is no gap or lacuna between his opinions and his life. Both are dominated by the same organic, inevitable fatality. They are what he is.

He thought to himself how, in some future time, when these formidable scientific inventions would have changed the face of the earth, some wayward philosopher like himself would still perhaps watch through a window a human head reading by candlelight, and find such a sight touching beyond words.