How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
"My dear sir, I could say, why do you fidget, taking down your suitcase and pressing into it the cap that you have worn all night? Nothing we can do will avail." (4b.2)
Bernard offers this thought to a fellow passenger on an overnight train. Throughout the novel, Bernard thinks a lot about habitual behavior and how it clouds our engagement with the deeper truths of existence, man. Here he seems to be reflecting on the meaninglessness daily activities. Thus quote suggests that Bernard believes these habitual actions are pointless because the end result of all acts and actions is death. We bet Bernard totally leaves dishes in the sink until he realizes he needs a clean bowl.
Quote #2
For myself, I have no aim. I have no ambition. I will let myself be carried on by the general impulse. The surface of my mind slips along like a pale-grey stream reflecting what passes. I cannot remember my past, my nose, or the color of my eyes, or what my general opinion of myself is. Only in moments of emergency, at a crossing, at a kerb, the wish to preserve my body springs out and seizes me and stops me, here, before this omnibus. We insist, it seems, on living." (4b.3)
Here, Bernard reflects how very little stands in the way of death, saying that he feels so disconnected from his own sense of individuality that it is a shock when his body produces the natural reflexes that prevent death (like when he almost steps off a curb at the wrong time but stops himself). Bernard's thoughts here echo Neville's thoughts in the wake of Percival's death, when he watches a little boy boarding a bus and thinks that the boy is just a slip away from a fatal accident.
Quote #3
"Am I not, as I walk, trembling with strange oscillations and vibrations of sympathy, which, unmoored as I am from a private being, bid me embrace these engrossed flocks; these starers and trippers; these errand-boys and furtive and fugitive girls who, ignoring their doom, look in at shop-windows? But I am aware of our ephemeral passage." (4b.4)
Bernard seems to be connecting habits or daily activities ( like shopping) with avoiding the "truth" of death. He claims that doesn't go in for such blinders and is aware of how tenuous life is.