How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
Leonard looked at her wondering, and had the sense of great things sweeping out of the shrouded night. But he could not receive them, because his heart was still full of little things. As the lost umbrella had spoilt the concert at Queen's Hall, so the lost situation was obscuring the diviner harmonies now. Death, Life and Materialism were fine words, but would Mr. Wilcox take him on as a clerk? Talk as one would, Mr. Wilcox was king of this world, the superman, with his own morality, whose head remained in the clouds. (27.20)
It doesn't matter how vast and sweeping Helen's fine moral ideas are – Leonard can't help but be worried about the small (but not insignificant) facts of his situation. He can't simply afford to indulge in poetic ideas…he just can't afford it.
Quote #8
Helen loved the absolute. Leonard had been ruined absolutely, and had appeared to her as a man apart, isolated from the world. A real man, who cared for adventure and beauty, who desired to live decently and pay his way, who could have travelled more gloriously through life than the Juggernaut car that was crushing him. (41.3)
Leonard's unhappiness seems to Helen to be all-absorbing – and romantic, in a warped way. It's his complete misery and the apparent injustice of his life, crushed by society's rules, that appeals to her, just for a moment.