from James Salter, The Hunters (1956)

Perhaps it was true that through defeat men were made, and that victors actually lost, with every triumph, the vital strength that found exercise only in recovering strength. Perhaps the spirit grew greater in achieving the understanding that was first confused and then exquisitely clear after having lost. But that was, Cleve thought, like saying it was strengthening to be poor. It wasn't, he was sure. It was sapping. It was like having a leech's mouth on your breast, forever draining, so that everything had to be sacrificed for nothing more than sustaining the burden of flesh. There were very few men who ever surmounted poverty; and there were very few losers, he felt, who realized anything but tears from their defeats.

the life and death of distance

from D. H. Lawrence, "The Odour of Chrysanthemums" (1914)

Was this what it all meant - utter, intact separateness, obscured by heat of living? In dread she turned her face away. The fact was too deadly. There had been nothing between them, and yet they had come together, exchanging their nakedness reapeatedly. Each time he had taken her, they had been two isolated beings, far apart as now. He was no more responsible than she.