“I have never been really able to believe that human affairs were serious matters. I had no idea where the serious might lie, except that it was not in all this I saw around me—which seemed to me merely an amusing game, or tiresome.”
These words clearly express the narrator’s thoughts about the meaninglessness of human existence. He plays with people’s hearts, he cants, he behaves lasciviously, but he doesn’t feel guilty of it, because nothing in this world makes sense, as he thinks.
“After all, living aloft is still the only way of being seen and hailed by the largest number."
The protagonist often says that we must always try to have “the higher level” than others, and he actually always followed his principle, he always did everything possible so that others were thankful to him for something: he helped them in any occasion, he supported and sympathized with them.
“After a certain age every man is responsible for his face”
These words refer directly to the protagonist: he used to be handsome, but he was always too egoistic, hypocritical, he played with people, thus he is quite ugly now. And he dares to admit it to another person, maybe thus he wants to warn others from being such kinds of people as he is.
