Life is indeed terribly complicated — to a man who has lost his principles.

I've lost everything in this world, and it's clean gone, forever — and now I can't lose heaven, too; no, I can't get to be wicked, besides all.

من غاب عن الأشياء غابت الأشياء عنه

A man devoid of hope and conscious of being so has ceased to belong to the future.

He had come so far from himself that I don't
think he knew who he was anymore.

He who has lost all hope has also lost all fear;

يفقد العالم شفافيته شيئاً فشيئاً، يصبح كتيماً وعصياً على الفهم، يهوى في المجهول، بينما يهرب الإنسان الذي خانه العالم، إلى داخل نفسه، إلى حنينه، إلى أحلامه، إلى ثورته، فلا يعود بإمكانه سماع الأصوات التي تسائله من الخارج بعد أن أصَمَّهُ الصوتُ الأليم الذي يرتفع في داخله

a man does not really begin to be alive until he has lost himself, until he has released the anxious grasp which he normally holds upon his life, his property, his reputation and position.

The dream was gone. Something had been taken from him. In a sort of panic he pushed the palms of his hands into his eyes and tried to bring up a picture of the waters lapping on Sherry Island and the moonlit veranda, and gingham on the golf-links and the dry sun and the gold color of her neck's soft down. And her mouth damp to his kisses and her eyes plaintive with melancholy and her freshness like new fine linen in the morning. Why, these things were no longer in the world! They had existed and they existed no longer.

For the first time in years the tears were streaming down his face. But they were for himself now. He did not care about mouth and eyes and moving hands. He wanted to care, and he could not care. For he had gone away and he could never go back any more. The gates were closed, the sun was gone down, and there was no beauty but the gray beauty of steel that withstands all time. Even the grief he could have borne was left behind in the country of illusion, of youth, of the richness of life, where his winter dreams had flourished.

“Long ago,” he said, “long ago, there was something in me, but now that thing is gone. Now that thing is gone, that thing is gone. I cannot cry. I cannot care. That thing will come back no more.

what matter it if a man gaineth the whole world and loseth his own soul?

He couldn't be more than twenty-five, but he obviously lived enough to have things to regret. He looked like he'd taken a long fall a short time ago. Pieces of the man he'd been were jumbled up with the new guy, the lost soul.

He's the victim of a critical age; he has ceased to believe in himself and he doesn't know what to believe in.

The man who fears losing has already lost.

An unfulfilled vocation drains the color from a man's entire existence.