Voss

“If truth is not acceptable, it becomes the imagination of others.”

“To understand the stars would spoil their appearance.”

“She would have liked to sit upon a rock and listen to words, not of any man, but detached, mysterious, poetic words that she alone would interpret through some sense inherited from sleep.”

“To make yourself, it is also necessary to destroy yourself.”

“The map? I will first make it.”

“Human relationships are vast as deserts: they demand all daring, she seemed to suggest. ”

“I am compelled into this country.”

“His legend will be written down, eventually, by those who are troubled by it.”

“He himself, he realized, had always been most abominably frightened, even at the height of his divine power, a frail god upon a rickety throne, afraid of opening letters, of making decisions, afraid of the instinctive knowledge in the eyes of mules, of the innocent eyes of good men, of the elastic nature of the passions, even of the devotion he had received from some men, and one woman, and dogs.”

“To kiss and to kill are similar words to eyes that focus with difficulty.”

“At times his arrogance did resolve itself into simplicity, though it was difficult, especially for strangers, to distinguish these occasions.”

“But the purpose and nature are never clearly revealed. Human behaviour is a series of lunges, of which, it is sometimes sensed, the direction is inevitable.”

“Voss could always, if necessary, fail to understand. But wounds will wince, especially in the salt air. He was smiling and screwing up his eyes at the great theatre of light and water. Some pitied him. Some despised him for his funny appearance of a foreigner. None, he realized with a tremor of anger, was conscious of his strength. Mediocre, animal men never do guess at the power of rock or fire, until the last moment before those elements reduce them to - nothing. This, the palest, the most transparent of words, yet comes closest to being complete.”

“The past is desirable, more often than not, because it can make no demands.”

“…stones, even, are smoother for the dust.”

“In general,' Voss replied, 'it is necessary to communicate without knowledge of the language.”

“Such was the texture of her marble.[In a description of Laura Trevelyan.]”

“There comes a moment when an individual who is too honest to take refuge in the old illusion of self-importance is suspended agonizingly between the flat sky and the flat earth, and prayer is no more that a slight gumminess on the roof of the mouth.”

“You have taken the important, essential core of the apple, including (one must not forget) the nasty pips, and scales (I do not know what you call those little things) which must be spat out.”

“History is not acceptable until it has been sifted for the truth.”

“—Los ateos, por lo general, lo son por razones mezquinas —aseveró Voss—. La más mezquina de todas ellas estriba en su propia falta de grandeza espiritual, que les impide concebir la idea de un Poder Divino. Al”

“I am uncomfortably aware of the very little I have seen and experienced in general, and of our country in particular,' Miss Trevelyan had just confessed, 'but the little I have seen is less, I like to feel, than what I know. Knowledge was never a matter of geography. Quite the reverse, it overflows all maps that exist. Perhaps true knowledge only comes from death by torture in the country of the mind.'She laughed somewhat painfully.'You will understand that. Some of you, at least, are the discoverers,' she said, and looked at them.”