All these things ought to have made me feel the kinship of humble circumstances, the comradeship of intellectual earnestness; but they did not.
The truth is that my relation to persons and things depended neither on social distinctions nor on intellectual or moral affinities.

My attitude, at this time, was determined by my consciousness of the unique elements in my character and history.

It seemed to me that I had been pursuing a single adventure since the beginning of the world.
Through highways and byways, underground, overground, by land, by sea, ever the same star had guided me, I thought, ever the same purpose had divided my affairs from other men's.

What that purpose was, where was the fixed horizon beyond which my star would not recede, was an absorbing mystery to me.

But the current moment never puzzled me.