Doctor Glas

My schoolboy ambition for high grades, once satisfied, faded away, and oddly enough no adult ambition took its place. I think it was because by then I had started to think. I hadn’t had time before.

What sort of scourge has whipped them out of the circle of fellow creatures on earth—everything crawling and walking and running and climbing and flying—to regard their world and their lives from above, from outside, with cold, distant eyes, and find it petty and without value? Where is this headed, how will it end?

The law of change is not merely that of death: it is first and foremost the law of life.

I have the solitary person’s constant need to see people around me—

Nor do I think he’s ever taken time to think very much; he has never had the leisure to let the poison of reflection drip into his wine. He’s happy, and I envy him.

We know so little about each other. We embrace a shadow and love a dream.

And what is moonlight? Secondhand sunshine. Feeble, counterfeit.