“A sense of his own identity came upon him with sudden force, and he felt the power of it. He was himself, and he knew what he had been.”

“A sense of his own identity came upon him with sudden force, and he felt the power of it. He was himself, and he knew what he had been.”

“But before [William Stoner] the future lay bright and certain and unchanging. He saw it, not as a flux of event and change and potentiality, but as a territory ahead that awaited his exploration. He saw it as the great University library, to which new wings might be built, to which new books might be added and from which old ones might be withdrawn, while its true nature remained essentially unchanged.”