Who knows what true loneliness is—not the conventional word, but the naked terror? To the lonely themselves it wears a mask. The most miserable outcast hugs some memory or some illusion. Now and then a fatal conjunction of events may lift the veil for an instant. For an instant only. No human being could bear a steady view of moral solitude without going mad.

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.

Wherefore I praised the dead which are already dead more than the living which are yet alive.

Oh, ye’ll tak’ the high road an’ I’ll tak’ the low road,
An’ I’ll be in Scotland before ye;
But me and my true love will never meet again,
On the bonnie, bonnie banks o’ Loch Lomond.

We have seen the best of our time: machinations, hollowness, treachery, and all ruinous disorders, follow us disquietly to our graves.