It is an unpleasant thing to go to bed without supper, it is a still less pleasant thing not to sup and not to know where one is to sleep.

All that was neither a city, nor a church, nor a river, nor color, nor light, nor shadow: it was reverie. For a long time, I remained motionless, letting myself be penetrated gently by this unspeakable ensemble, by the serenity of the sky and the melancholy of the moment. I do not know what was going on in my mind, and I could not express it; it was one of those ineffable moments when one feels something in himself which is going to sleep and something which is awakening.

Beauty is as useful as the useful. More so, perhaps. (Le beau est aussi utile que l'utile. Plus peut-etre.)

Animals are nothing but the portrayal of our virtues and vices made manifest to our eyes, the visible reflections of our souls.

...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.

The supreme ordeal, let us say rather, the only ordeal, is the loss of the beloved being.

by making himself a priest made himself a demon.