But suppose Peter said to her, Yes, yes, but your parties—what's the sense of your parties? all she could say was (and nobody could be expected to understand): They're an offering; which sounded horribly vague. But

They neither work nor weep; in their shape is their reason.

How, then, she had asked herself, did one know one thing or another thing about people, sealed as they were? Only like a bee, drawn by some sweetness or sharpness in the air intangible to touch or taste, one haunted the dome-shaped hive, ranged the wastes of the air over the countries of the world alone, and then haunted the hives with their murmurs and their stirrings; the hives which were people.

My own brain is to me the most unaccountable of machinery - always buzzing, humming, soaring, roaring, diving, and then buried in mud. And why? What's this passion for?

And to everybody there was always this sense of unlimited resources, she supposed, one after another, she, Lily, Augustus Carmichael, must feel, our apparitions, the things you know us by, are simply childish. Beneath it is all dark, it is all spreading, it is unfathomably deep; but now and again we rise to the surface and that is what you see us by.

All of us have wonders hidden in our breasts, only needing circumstances to evoke them.

An idea, like a ghost (according to the common notion of ghosts), must be spoken to a little before it will explain itself.

Never close your lips to those whom you have already opened your heart.

those questions at sufficient length. If a dread of not being understood be hidden in the breasts of other young people to anything like the extent to which it used to be hidden in mine,—which I consider probable, as I have no particular reason to suspect myself of having been a monstrosity,—it is the key to many reservations. I felt convinced that if I described Miss Havisham's as my eyes had seen it, I should not be understood.

for in natures, as in seas, depth answers unto depth

Most things disappoint till you look deeper.

Pray don't talk to me about the weather, Mr. Worthing. Whenever people talk to me about the weather, I always feel quite certain that they mean something else. And that makes me quite nervous.