Barbary Shore

Revolutions are the periods of history when individuals count most.

The storm approaches its thunderhead, and it is apparent that the boat drifts ever closer to shore. So the blind will lead the blind, and the deaf shout warnings to one another until their voices are lost.

The essence of spirit, he thought to himself, was to choose the thing which did not better one's position but made it more perilous. That was why the world he knew was poor, for it insisted morality and caution were identical.

The manuscript lay like a dust-rag on his desk, and Eitel found, as he had found before, that the difficulty of art was that it forced a man back on his life, and each time the task was more difficult and distasteful.

What were the phenomena of the world today? If I knew little else, I knew the answer — war, and the preparations for new war.

There was that law of life so cruel and so just which demanded that one must grow or else pay more for remaining the same.