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No action could be lower or more futile than for one person to throw upon another the burden of his abdication of choice.

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It seemed natural; natural to the moment’s peculiar reality that was sharply clear, but cut off from everything, immediate, but disconnected, like a b...more

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Whenever anyone accuses some person of being ‘unfeeling,’ he means that that person is just. He means that that person has no causeless emotions and w...more

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They said you were hard and cold and unfeeling.”“But it’s true...I am, in the sense they mean—only have they ever told you in just what sense they mea...more

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In the many months of his absence, she never wondered whether he was true to her or not; she knew he was. She knew, even though she was too young to k...more

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If, to him, love was a celebration of one’s self and of existence—then, to the self-haters and life-haters, the pursuit of destruction was the only fo...more

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If that’s the price of getting together, then I’ll be damned if I want to live on the same earth with any human beings! If the rest of them can surviv...more

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...she stood beside him, sagging in his arms, abandoning herself to anything he wished, in open acknowledgment of his power to reduce her to helplessn...more

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The capacity for unclouded enjoyment, she thought, does not belong to irresponsible fools; an inviolate peace of spirit is not the achievement of a dr...more

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She wanted to tell him of the years she had spent looking for men such as he to work with; she wanted to tell him that his enemies were hers, that she...more

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To love a woman for her virtues is meaningless. She's earned it, it's a payment, not a gift. But to love her for her vices is a real gift, unearned an...more

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You always play it open, don’t you?” he asked.“I’ve never noticed you doing otherwise.”“I thought I was the only one who could afford to.

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As she looked at him, her dark gray eyes went slowly from astonishment to stillness, then to a strange expression that resembled a look of weariness, ...more

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When the train stopped, when she got off and heard the concrete of the platform under her heels, she felt light, lifted, impelled to action. She start...more

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...were she lying crushed under the ruins of a building, were she torn by the bomb of an air raid, so long as she was still in existence she would kno...more