Though we chisel away as best we can at the mysterious block from which our life is made, the black vein of destiny continually reappears.

Errors make excellent projectiles. They strike it cleverly in its vulnerable spot, in default of a cuirass, in its lack of logic.

She loved with so much passion as she loved with ignorance. She did not know whether it were good or evil, beneficent or dangerous, necessary or accidental, eternal or transitory, permitted or prohibited: she loved.

The night was serene. Not a cloud was in the zenith. What mattered is that the earth was red, the moon retained her whiteness. Such is the indifference of heaven.

In the first love, the soul is taken far before the body; afterwards the body is taken far before the soul; sometimes the soul is not taken at all...

He thought her more beautiful than ever, with a beauty that was at once feminine and angelic, that wholeness of beauty that had moved Petrarch to song and brought Dante to his knees.

Every skull-cap may dream of the tiara. The priest is nowadays the only man who can become a king in a regular manner; and what a king! the supreme king.