I rose by sheer military ability to the rank of corporal.

I rose by sheer military ability to the rank of corporal.

But such occasions of excellence became less and less frequent. As her technique became sounder, [her] sincerity became less necessary.

He regarded love as a sort of cruel malady through which the elect are required to pass in their late youth and from which they emerge, pale and wrung, but ready for the business of living.

Faith is a never-ending pool of clarity, reaching far beyond the margins of consciousness. We all know more than we know we know.

There is no need for me to curse you -the murderer survives the victim only to learn that it was himself that he longed to be rid of. Hatred is self-hatred.

[Dona Maria] saw that the people of this world moved about in an armor of egotism, drunk with self-gazing, athirst for compliments, hearing little of what was said to them, unmoved by the accidents that befell their closest friends, in dread of all appeals that might interrupt their long communion with their own desires.