Under the activities of that machine the person who, in such moments as this, he felt to be himself, was fading and dying.

He remembered how, when he was a little boy and his father called him in the morning, he used to leap from his bed into the full consciousness of himself.

That consciousness was Life itself.

Whatever took its place, action, reflection, the power of concentrated thought, were only functions of a mechanism useful to society; things that could be bought in the market.

There was only one thing that had an absolute value for each individual, and it was just that original impulse, that internal heat, that feeling of one's self in one's own breast.
When Alexander walked back to his hotel, the red and green lights were blinking along the docks on the farther shore, and the soft white stars were shining in the wide sky above the river.
The next night, and the next, Alexander repeated this same foolish performance.