You! said the Caterpillar contemptuously. Who are you?
Alice felt a little irritated at the Caterpillar’s making
such very short remarks, and she drew herself up
and said, very gravely,
I think, you ought to tell me who you are, first.

…no man can ever feel his own identity aright except his eyes be closed; as if darkness were indeed the proper element of our essences…
MD Ch. 11

…It is not down in any map; true places never are…
MD Ch. 12

…for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending…
MD Ch. 17

…there is a darkness at the heart of intention and there is an inescapable indeterminacy in their relation even to the actions that seem most precisely to realise them...
Raymond Tallis

Les beaux livres sont écrits dans une sorte de langue étrangère. Sous chaque mot chacun de nous met son sens ou du moins son image qui est souvent un contresens.
Proust

It was well said of a certain German book that “er lasst sich nicht lesen “ — it does not permit itself to be read. There are some secrets which do not permit themselves to be told. Men die nightly in their beds, wringing the hands of ghostly confessors, and looking them piteously in the eyes — die with despair of heart and convulsion of throat, on account of the hideousness of mysteries which willsuffer themselves not  to be revealed…
The Man Of The Crowd – E.A. Poe

…he seemed alone, absolutely alone in the universe. A bit of wreck in the mid Atlantic…

…Of a Sunday, Wall-street is deserted as Petra…Marius brooding among the ruins of Carthage…

…like the last column of some ruined temple, he remained standing mute and solitary in the middle of the otherwise deserted room…

…Strangely huddled at the base of the wall, his knees drawn up, and lying on his side, his head touching the cold stones, I saw the wasted Bartleby…