I wanted you to forgive me for being me,” he said, “and having to be what I am, and do what I have done.” A smile passed over his lips. “Just as you … - Rebecca West

They had wandered in a defeated continent of the vulgar world, where vulgarity had lost its power and its pride, and had to repeat old jokes because it could no longer invent new ones, and speak of virtues in phrases so worn by use that they gave the same feeling of want as rags.

It struck her that the difference between men and women is the rock on which civilization will split before it can reach any goal that could justify its expenditure of effort.

You should smile at that,’ he said. ‘There is a Yiddish word, schlemiel, a man who falls over everything, who buys brass for gold. There should be a goy word for the elegant schlemiel, who has been born to handle gold but never knows it from brass and calls it gold with the weight of authority, who falls over everything but does it with such assurance that the fall is taken for a curtsy.