He resigned the vice-presidency of the senior class and took to reading and walking as almost his only pursuits.

He voluntarily attended graduate lectures in philosophy and biology, and sat in all of them with a rather pathetically intent look in his eyes, as if waiting for something the lecturer would never quite come to.

Sometimes Amory would see him squirm in his seat; and his face would light up; he was on fire to debate a point.
He grew more abstracted on the street and was even accused of becoming a snob, but Amory knew it was nothing of the sort, and once when Burne passed him four feet off, absolutely unseeingly, his mind a thousand miles away, Amory almost choked with the romantic joy of watching him.
Burne seemed to be climbing heights where others would be forever unable to get a foothold.
"I tell you," Amory declared to Tom, "he's the first contemporary I've ever met whom I'll admit is my superior in mental capacity." "It's a bad time to admit it--people are beginning to think he's odd." "He's way over their heads--you know you think so yourself when you talk to him--Good Lord, Tom, you _used_ to stand out against 'people.' Success has completely conventionalized you." Tom grew rather annoyed.
"What's he trying to do--be excessively holy ?" "No! not like anybody you've ever seen.

Never enters the Philadelphian Society.

He has no faith in that rot.