Ricoeur argues: 'Another new source of complexity has appeared in the twentieth century, in particular with the stream-of-consciousness novel, so marvelously illustrated by a work of Virginia Woolf [To the Lighthouse], a masterpiece from the point of view of the perception of time ...[in which what] holds the center of attention is the incompleteness of personality, the diversity of levels of the conscious, the subconscious, and the unconscious, the stirring of unformulated desires, the inchoactive and evanescent character of feelings..."

Love casts the same glamor over everything, it is true, glorifying and deifying all it touches; but the freshness, the newness, the very childish unquestioningness, are charms that cease with maturity. We learn to weigh our affections cautiously and prudently, balancing the matters of loss and gain, without being aware of it. We call it the prudence of age, and smile furtively at the children about us, speaking in an apologetic fashion of the thoughtlessness of youth.

“[…] They talk of you as if you were Croesus—and I expect the beggars sponge on you unconscionably.” And Vickers launched forth into a tirade very different from his platform utterances. He spoke with extreme contempt of the dense stupidity exhibited on all occasions by the working classes.

The Chinese mountaineers, he continued, "are a contingent fearing neither hardship nor death, back in 1960 and 1975 they twice ascended Mt Chumulangma from the north slope.