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DICK: (Pompously) Art isn’t meaningless. MAURY: It is in itself. It isn’t in that it tries to make life less so.
I’d feel that it being a meaningless world, why write? The very attempt to give it purpose is purposeless.
he did not care to experiment—not from any moral compunction, but from a dread of allowing any entanglement to disturb what he felt was the growing serenity of his life.
“A classic,” suggested Anthony, “is a successful book that has survived the reaction of the next period or generation.
“I detest reformers, especially the sort who try to reform me.”
If I hurt your feelings we ought to discuss it. I don’t like this kiss-and-forget.” “But I don’t want to argue. I think it’s wonderful that we can kiss and forget, and when we can’t it’ll be time to argue.”
I’ve got a man’s mind.” “You’ve got a mind like mine. Not strongly gendered either way.”
one owes as much to the current generation as to one’s unwanted children. What a fate—to grow rotund and unseemly, to lose my self-love, to think in terms of milk, oatmeal, nurse, diapers. . . . Dear dream children, how much more beautiful you are, dazzling little creatures who flutter (all dream children must flutter) on golden, golden wings——
Beautiful things grow to a certain height and then they fail and fade off, breathing out memories as they decay.
Arguments were fatal to Gloria’s disposition. She had all her life been associated either with her mental inferiors or with men who, under the almost hostile intimidation of her beauty, had not dared to contradict her; naturally, then, it irritated her when Anthony emerged from the state in which her pronouncements were an infallible and ultimate decision.
Gloria was sure she wanted but to read and dream and be fed tomato sandwiches and lemonades by some angelic servant still in a shadowy hinterland.
Gloria told him to go ahead and make as much money as he could—that was the only thing that counted anyhow. . . .
He was tremendously proud of Gloria, proud that she never failed to eclipse whatever other women might be in the party, proud that men were always glad to revel with her in great rowdy groups, without any attempt to do more than enjoy her beauty and the warmth of her vitality.
the essential element in these men at the top was their faith that their affairs were the very core of life. All other things being equal, self-assurance and opportunism won out over technical knowledge; it was obvious that the more expert work went on near the bottom—so, with appropriate efficiency, the technical experts were kept there.
I learned a little of beauty—enough to know that it had nothing to do with truth—and
Boredom, which is another name and a frequent disguise for vitality, became the unconscious motive of all my acts.
“What a feeble thing intelligence is, with its short steps, its waverings, its pacings back and forth, its disastrous retreats! Intelligence is a mere instrument of circumstances. There are people who say that intelligence must have built the universe—why, intelligence never built a steam-engine! Circumstances built a steam-engine. Intelligence is little more than a short foot-rule by which we measure the infinite achievements of Circumstances.
“thank God we four can all pass to our eternal rest knowing we’ve left the world a little better for having lived in it.”
Gloria would be twenty-six in May. There was nothing, she had said, that she wanted, except to be young and beautiful for a long time, to be gay and happy, and to have money and love.
she perceived that in spite of her adoration of him, her jealousy, her servitude, her pride, she fundamentally despised him—and her contempt blended indistinguishably with her other emotions. . . . All this was her love—the
Life, it seemed, must be a setting up of props around one—otherwise it was disaster. There was no rest, no quiet. He had been futile in longing to drift and dream; no one drifted except to maelstroms, no one dreamed, without his dreams becoming fantastic nightmares of indecision and regret.
After the sureties of youth there sets in a period of intense and intolerable complexity. With the soda-jerker this period is so short as to be almost negligible. Men higher in the scale hold out longer in the attempt to preserve the ultimate niceties of relationship, to retain “impractical” ideas of integrity. But by the late twenties the business has grown too intricate, and what has hitherto been imminent and confusing has become gradually remote and dim. Routine comes down like twilight on a harsh landscape, softening it until it is tolerable. The complexity is too subtle, too varied; the
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In his moments of insecurity he was haunted by the suggestion that life might be, after all, significant.
“I don’t care about truth. I want some happiness.”
Sometimes, after listening to a sustained invective concerned with a dull and, on the face of it, absurd subject known as military “courtesy,” he suspected that the dim purpose of the war was to let the regular army officers—men with the mentality and aspirations of schoolboys—have their fling with some real slaughter.
“Dear little Dot, life is so damned hard.” She was crying upon his shoulder. “So damned hard, so damned hard,” he repeated aimlessly; “it just hurts people and hurts people, until finally it hurts them so that they can’t be hurt ever any more. That’s the last and worst thing it does.”
She had immutable faith that the war would be over before he was called upon to fight, and meanwhile the suit would be won, and they could begin again, this time on a different basis. The first thing different would be that she would have a child. It was unbearable that she should be so utterly alone.
It did not occur to Anthony that the type of man who attains commercial success seldom knows how or why, and, as in his grandfather’s case, when he ascribes reasons, the reasons are generally inaccurate and absurd.
She knew that in her breast she had never wanted children. The reality, the earthiness, the intolerable sentiment of child-bearing, the menace to her beauty—had appalled her. She wanted to exist only as a conscious flower, prolonging and preserving itself. Her sentimentality could cling fiercely to her own illusions, but her ironic soul whispered that motherhood was also the privilege of the female baboon.
Aristocracy’s only an admission that certain traits which we call fine—courage and honor and beauty and all that sort of thing—can best be developed in a favorable environment, where you don’t have the warpings of ignorance and necessity.”
“The last thing he said to me,” recollected Anthony, “was that he was going to work so as to forget that there was nothing worth working for.”
