Do you know what friendship is... it is to be brother and sister; two souls which touch without mingling, two fingers on one hand.

Symmetry is ennui, and ennui is the very essence of grief and melancholy. Despair yawns.

...We pray together, we are afraid together, and then we go to sleep. Even if Satan came into the house, no one would interfere. After all, what is there to fear in this house? There is always one with us who is the strongest. Satan may visit our house, but the good Lord lives here.

Let us study things that are no more. It is necessary to understand them, if only to avoid them.

No army can withstand the strength of an idea whose time has come.

Woman, nude, is the blue sky. Clouds and garments are an obstacle to contemplation. Beauty and infinity would be gazed upon unveiled.

As we have said, robust souls are sometimes almost, but not entirely, overthrown by strokes of misfortune....Despair has steps leading upward. From total depression we rise to despondency, from despondency to affliction, from affliction to melancholy. Melancholy is a twilight state in which suffering transmutes into a somber joy....Melancholy is the enjoyment of being sad.