I cannot imagine how I came into the world now, purposeless, unnecessary, without anything to justify my existence.Mr. Elvesham
There was, I remember, the keenest edge of a quiet, incessant desire consuming my mind.Narrator
The world became, as it were, symbolical - in every direction green expanses, trim lawns, high hedges, pathways, garden trees, divided this empire into territories, marked out the departments of the great Feudalism overhead.Narrator
People dined in the evening into 2 or 3; the classes dined at different hours; we had dinner presently with Elvesham, and then I was free to do as I pleased until 9 the next morning.Narrator
Underneath, in spite of its appearance of millions of nice, respectable people going about their duties, the whole system was a mere property, a tyranny of disorder.Mr. Elvesham
But it is a time of hope, a time of vivacious life, albeit a time when one's sympathy's are almost entirely centered in oneself.Narrator
There is also the beginning of one's distinctively sexual interests, it complicates friendships, and leaves a gleam of malice in one's attitude towards parents and those things the parents stand for.Narrator
One perceives that men are absolutely incapable of a decent thing, that business is under the thumb of the violent or cunning, and that the world's affairs go on by blundering and crime.Narrator
All teachers, all schoolmasters, are monsters-all parents, autocrats, liveried servants, base creatures at best, policemen beneficent only in comparison with the detestable people one finds out of doors.Mr. Elvesham
I cannot imagine how anyone reverts to intimacies with parents and the home circle.Mr. Elvesham