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 l… - John Cowper Powys

"People . . . don't . . . seem . . . to realise," he said, "what Evil is. They don't . . . seem . . . to realise how far it goes down! It has holes . . . that go down . . . beyond the mind . . . beyond the reason ... . beyond all we can think of! Something comes up from these holes that gives you power when you're in certain . . . in certain moods . . . and it's then that you feel things . . . and . . . Do Things" — his voice rose here to such a pitch that the girl started up and made a movement of her hand towards him — "which nothing in Nature can forgive!"

No I've never read a line of de Sade and never shall. You see my own dominant overpowering maniacal vice was sadism and in Philadelphia (isn't that the right place for such a thing?) I used to borrow from a friend Sadistic Books in French (he had half a library of them!) and carry them off to my lodging where I wd. read them with my knees knocking together & all my pulses going it like mad in a prolonged cerebral fury of crazy unsatisfied satisfaction.

...we have a right to narrow down our universe ever further and further; until like the world of the Iliad and the Odyssey it is made up of certain simple endurances, enjoyments, mental and physical struggles, surrounded by the washing of the sea, the blowing of the wind, the swaying of the wheat, the falling of the rain, the voyaging of the clouds, and the motions of the sun and moon and dawn and twilight.