I should like to be the landscape which I am contemplating, I should like this sky, this quiet water to think themselves within me, that it might be … - Simone de Beauvoir

My contemplation is an excruciation only because it is also a joy.

I should like this sky, this quiet water, to think themselves within me, that it might be I whom they express in flesh and bone, and I remain at a distance. But it is also by this distance that the sky and the water exist before me.

He had not applauded, he had remained seated, but he had looked at her steadily. From the depths of eternity he had looked at her and Rosalind became immortal. If I could believe him, she thought, if only I could believe him!

I realized that even if we went on talking till Judgment Day, I would still find the time all too short.

It is easier to put people in chains than to remove them if the chains bring prestige, said George Bernard Shaw.