There are strange things lost and forgotten in obscure corners of the newspaper.

It appears to me that it [sin] is simply an attempt to penetrate into another and higher sphere in a forbidden manner. You can understand why it is so rare. There are few, indeed, who wish to penetrate into other spheres, higher or lower, in ways allowed or forbidden. Men, in the mass, are amply content with life as they find it. Therefore there are few saints, and sinners (in the proper sense) are fewer still.

It was better, he thought, to fail in attempting exquisite things than to succeed in the department of the utterly contemptible.

For, usually and fitly, the presence of an introduction is held to imply that there is something of consequence and importance to be introduced.

We both wondered whether these contradictions that one can't avoid if one begins to think of time and space may not really be proofs that the whole of life is a dream, and the moon and stars bits of nightmare.

Old stories often turn out to be true.

The saint endeavors to recover a gift which he has lost; the sinner tries to obtain something which was never his. In brief, he repeats the Fall.