From the drawing-room window I see pass almost daily an old gentleman with white hair, a firm step, broad shoulders, healthy pink skin, a sunny smile - always singing to himself as he goes - a happy, rosy-cheeked old fellow,… — W.N.P. Barbellion Copy Share Image
“The porter spends his days in the Library keeping strict vigil over this catacomb of books, passing along between the shelves and yet never paying heed to the almost audible susurrus of desire- the desire every book has to be taken down and read, to live, to come into being in somebody's mind. He even hands the volumes over the… — W.N.P. Barbellion Copy Share
Sometimes I think I am going mad. I live for days in the mystery and tears of things so that the commonest object, the most familiar face- even my own- become ghostly, unreal, enigmatic. I get into an attitude of almost total scepticism, nescience, solipsism, in a world of dumb, sphinx-like things that cannot explain themselves. The discovery of how… — W.N.P. Barbellion Copy Share
“I have reveled in my littleness and irresponsibility. It has relieved me of the harassing desire to live, I feel content to live dangerously, indifferent to my fate; I have discovered I am a fly, that we are all flies, that nothing matters. It’s a great load off my life, for I don’t mind being such a micro-organism—to me the… — W.N.P. Barbellion Copy Share
Suddenly I awake to a stark amazement at everything... To be alive is so incredible that all I can do is to lie still… — W.N.P. Barbellion Copy Share Image
“To forget the past so easily seems scarcely loyal to oneself. I am so selfishly absorbed in my present self that I have grown not to care a damn about that ever increasing collection of past selves- those dear, dead gentlemen who one after the other have tenanted the temple of this flesh and handed on the torch of my… — W.N.P. Barbellion Copy Share
I waste much time gaping and wondering. During a walk or in a book or in the middle of an embrace, suddenly I awake to a stark amazement at everything. The bare fact of existence paralyses me- holds my mind in mortmain. To be alive is so incredible that all I do is to lie still and merely breathe- like… — W.N.P. Barbellion Copy Share
I can remember wondering as a child if I were a young Macaulay or Ruskin and secretly deciding that I was. My infant mind… — W.N.P. Barbellion Copy Share Image
An appetite for knowledge is apt to rush one off one's feet, like any other appetite if not curbed. I often stand in the… — W.N.P. Barbellion Copy Share Image
“When the sun grew too hot we went into the wood where waves of Bluebells dashed around the foot of the Oak in front… — W.N.P. Barbellion Copy Share Image
“When I feel ill, cinema pictures of the circumstances of my death flit across my mind's eye. I cannot prevent them. I consider the… — W.N.P. Barbellion Copy Share Image
In the enfranchised mind of the scientific naturalist, the usual feelings of repugnance simply do not exist. Curiosity conquers prejudice. — W.N.P. Barbellion Copy Share Image
Youth is an intoxication without wine, someone says. Life is an intoxication. The only sober man is the melancholiac, who, disenchanted, looks at life,… — W.N.P. Barbellion Copy Share Image
