Quote 1
"I ventured to think," stammered Bernard, "that your fordship might find the matter of sufficient scientific interest…"
"Yes, I do find it of sufficient scientific interest," said the deep voice. "Bring these two individuals back to London with you." (9.9-10)
Bernard uses "science" to cloak his selfish motivations (i.e., preventing his own deportation to an island).
Quote 2
"Adults intellectually and during working hours," he went on. "Infants where feeling and desire are concerned."
[…]
[…] "It suddenly struck me the other day," continued Bernard, "that it might be possible to be an adult all the time."
"I don't understand." Lenina's tone was firm.
"I know you don't. And that's why we went to bed together yesterday—like infants—instead of being adults and waiting." (6.1.65-9)
Or, don't go to "Symbols, Imagery, Allegory" and instead just let Bernard sum it up for you here.
Quote 3
To have dealings with members of the lower castes was always, for Bernard, a most distressing experience. For whatever the cause (and the current gossip about the alcohol in his blood-surrogate may very likely—for accidents will happen—have been true) Bernard's physique was hardly better than that of the average Gamma. He stood eight centimetres short of the standard Alpha height and was slender in proportion. Contact with members of the lower castes always reminded him painfully of this physical inadequacy.
[…]
"Hurry up!" said Bernard irritably. One of them glanced at him. Was that a kind of bestial derision that he detected in those blank grey eyes? "Hurry up!" he shouted more loudly, and there was an ugly rasp in his voice. (4.2.3-5)
Bernard isn't satisfied with his intellectual superiority. For him, power is threatened by physical inadequacy. Of course, the only threat to his authority is his own doubt. Confidence—it's a tricky business.
Quote 4
"I wonder if you'd like to come back to London with us?" he asked, making the first move in a campaign whose strategy he had been secretly elaborating ever since, in the little house, he had realized who the "father" of this young savage must be. (8.77)
Bernard takes a role similar to the World State here—his power lies in his ability to manipulate.
Quote 5
"He's mad," whispered Bernard, staring with wide open eyes. "They'll kill him. They'll…" A great shout suddenly went up from the mob; a wave of movement drove it menacingly towards the Savage. "Ford help him!" said Bernard, and averted his eyes.
"Ford helps those who help themselves." And with a laugh, actually a laugh of exultation, Helmholtz Watson pushed his way through the crowd. (15.39-40)
We're thinking that Helmholtz laughs here because, in all likelihood, he's probably the guy who wrote the phrase "Ford helps those who helps themselves." And if not, at least we see that he's laughing at the absurdity of his own profession—the writing of inane hypnopaedic phrases.
Quote 6
"…what would it be like if I could, if I were free—not enslaved by my conditioning."
"But, Bernard, you're saying the most awful things."
"Don't you wish you were free, Lenina?"
"I don't know what you mean. I am free. Free to have the most wonderful time. Everybody's happy nowadays."
He laughed, "Yes, 'Everybody's happy nowadays.' We begin giving the children that at five. But wouldn't you like to be free to be happy in some other way, Lenina? In your own way, for example; not in everybody else's way."
"I don't know what you mean," she repeated. (6.1.27-32)
Lenina and Bernard can't understand each other here because they have different conceptions of the word "free." For Bernard, freedom is the freedom to be unhappy. Of course, Bernard isn't yet able to express this, so it is left to John to find the words in the second half of the novel. For Lenina, freedom is just another adjective she's been taught to apply to her life as it stands. She is free and happy because she's been told she is free and happy. The language has been corrupted and is as controlled by the State as citizens are.
Quote 7
"I drink to the imminence of His Coming," he repeated, with a sincere attempt to feel that the coming was imminent; but the eyebrow continued to haunt him, and the Coming, so far as he was concerned, was horribly remote. He drank and handed the cup to Clara Deterding. "It'll be a failure again," he said to himself. "I know it will." But he went on doing his best to beam. (5.2.17)
What is it, exactly, that prevents Bernard from losing himself in Solidarity Service like everyone else? He focuses on details—Morgana's unibrow, for example—instead of letting his mind go. Focused on the tangible, he can't address the abstract, the "remote." Oddly enough, this seems to be the opposite of what differentiates him from the rest of society at other times—he's concerned with larger, abstract ideas while people like Lenina can only think about clothing and soma.
Quote 8
"Yes, I thought it was wonderful," he lied and looked away; the sight of her transfigured face was at once an accusation and an ironical reminder of his own separateness. He was as miserably isolated now as he had been when the service began—more isolated by reason of his unreplenished emptiness, his dead satiety. Separate and unatoned, while the others were being fused into the Greater Being; alone even in Morgana's embrace—much more alone, indeed, more hopelessly himself than he had ever been in his life before. He had emerged from that crimson twilight into the common electric glare with a self-consciousness intensified to the pitch of agony. He was utterly miserable, and perhaps (her shining eyes accused him), perhaps it was his own fault. "Quite wonderful," he repeated; but the only thing he could think of was Morgana's eyebrow. (5.2.34)
Bernard seems to oscillate back and forth between pleasure at his own individuality (and indeed a desire to differentiate himself further) and misery over his unique identity.
Quote 9
"I thought we'd be more… more together here—with nothing but the sea and moon. More together than in that crowd, or even in my rooms. Don't you understand that?" (6.1.35)
Bernard hits on an interesting note here—being alone together brings two people closer than being together in a crowd. Make sense? Well, not to Lenina; she's under the same impression as Foster, namely that there's nothing to do while one is alone.
Quote 10
The words awoke a plaintive echo in Bernard's mind. Alone, alone… "So am I," he said, on a gush of confidingness. "Terribly alone."
"Are you?" John looked surprised. "I thought that in the Other Place… I mean, Linda always said that nobody was ever alone there."
Bernard blushed uncomfortably. "You see," he said, mumbling and with averted eyes, "I'm rather different from most people, I suppose. If one happens to be decanted different…"
"Yes, that's just it." The young man nodded. "If one's different, one's bound to be lonely." (8.62-7)
It's fascinating that these men—in completely different worlds, with completely different upbringings, environments, and realities—have discovered the same universal truth.
Quote 11
"But what were your rhymes?" Bernard asked.
"They were about being alone."
[…]
"Well, I gave them that as an example, and they reported me to the Principal."
"I'm not surprised," said Bernard. "It's flatly against all their sleep-teaching. Remember, they've had at least a quarter of a million warnings against solitude." (12.52-8)
In case you forgot that solitude was outlawed…
Quote 12
"Talking about her as though she were a bit of meat." Bernard ground his teeth. "Have her here, have her there." Like mutton. Degrading her to so much mutton. She said she'd think it over, she said she'd give me an answer this week. Oh, Ford, Ford, Ford." He would have liked to go up to them and hit them in the face—hard, again and again. (3.139)
Bernard's disgust has much to do with identity; he feels that Lenina is being defined solely by her body—as mere "meat."
Quote 13
"In a crowd," he grumbled. "As usual." He remained obstinately gloomy the whole afternoon; wouldn't talk to Lenina's friends (of whom they met dozens in the ice-cream soma bar between the wrestling bouts); and in spite of his misery absolutely refused to take the half-gramme raspberry sundae which she pressed upon him. "I'd rather be myself," he said. "Myself and nasty. Not somebody else, however jolly." (6.1.11)
Bernard highlights one of the key powers of soma—the ability to strip an individual of what little personal identity he has left.