He was an embittered atheist (the sort of atheist who does not so much disbelieve in God as personally dislike Him), and took a sort of pleasure in thinking that human affairs would never improve. Sometimes, he said, when sleeping on the Embankment, it had consoled him to look up at Mars or Jupiter and think that there were probably Embankment sleepers there. He had a curious theory about this. Life on earth, he said, is harsh because the planet is poor in the necessities of existence. Mars, with its cold climate and scanty water, must be far poorer, and life correspondingly harsher. Whereas on earth you are merely imprisoned for stealing sixpence, on Mars you are probably boiled alive. This thought cheered Bozo, I do not know why. He was a very exceptional man.

Being a beggar, he said, was not his fault, and he refused either to have any compunction about it or to let it trouble him. He was the enemy of society, and q…

The most bitter insult one can offer to a Londoner is 'bastard' - which, taken for what it means, is hardly an insult at all.

He had two subjects of conversation, the shame and come-down of being a tramp, and the best way of getting a free meal.

I do not ask, O Lord, that life may be A pleasant road.

A sense of utter loneliness-loneliness inevitable, crushing, eternal, the loneliness of existence, encompassed by the infinite void of unconsciousness-enfolded…

The children eat and wriggle and laugh, The two old ladies stroke their silk; But the cat is grown small and thin with desire, Transformed to a creeping lust f…