Martin Eden

You wanted to create beauty, but how could you when you knew nothing about the nature of beauty? You wanted to write about life when you knew nothing of the essential characteristics of life. You wanted to write about the world and the scheme of existence when the world was a Chinese puzzle to you and all that you could have written would have been about what you did not know of the scheme of existence.

it was a very beautiful and well-ordered world and that it was good to be alive and to love.

He noticed one with narrow-slitted eyes and a loose-lipped mouth. That fellow was vicious, he decided.

He couldn’t talk their talk just yet, though in time he would.

Is love so gross a thing that it must feed upon publication and public notice? It would seem so. I have sat and thought upon it till my head went around

in the upper walks of life.

not of the eart

amused glance that the other stole privily at him

lodged only in his mind

"Ruth." It was a talisman, a magic word to conjure with. Each time he murmured it, her face shimmered before him, suffusing the foul wall with a golden radiance. This radiance did not stop at the wall. It extended on into infinity, and through its golden depths his soul went questing after hers. The best that was in him was out in splendid flood. The very thought of her ennobled and purified him, made him better, and made him want to be better.