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

rounded by the unknown, apprehensive of what might happen, ignorant of what he should do, aware that he walked and bore himself awkwardly, fearful that every attribute and power of him was similarly afflicted. He was keenly sensitive, hopelessly self-conscious

in the upper walks of life.

not of the eart

amused glance that the other stole privily at him

lodged only in his mind