...life allowed to waste like a tap left running.

Life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning.

When you consider things like the stars, our affairs don't seem to matter very much, do they?

This late age of the world’s experience had bred in them all, all men and women, a well of tears.

How much she wanted it - that people should look pleased as she came in, Clarissa thought and turned and walked back towards Bond Street, annoyed, because it was silly to have other reasons for doing things. Much rather would she have been one of those people like Richard who did things for themselves, whereas, she thought, waiting to cross, half the time she did things not simply, not for themselves; but to make people think this or that; perfect idiocy she knew (and now the policeman held up his hand) for no one was ever for a second taken in.

It might be possible that the world itself is without meaning.