“I have never been loved enough to gain the desire of reproducing a being in the image of my lover and I have never been given enough pleasure so that my brain has not had the leisure to seek better...”

“No, no, don't let my vulnerable heart share in this sacrifice to lust! Let him disgust me before pleasing me! Let him be what others have been, an instrument that I can break before becoming the ec...”

“It is true, Monsieur," Raoule went on, shrugging her shoulders, "that I have had lovers in my life as I have books in my library, to know, to study. But I have had no passion, I have not written my...”

“A very special case. A few years more, and that pretty creature who you love too much, I think, will, without ever loving them, have known as many men as there are beads on her aunt's rosary. No ha...”

“A caprice is handled like a stew, and the pepper is added at the last minute.”

“An error of the passions is not the flowering of a great love, and merely the beauty of the human form is not capable of inspiring an eternity of mad attachment.”

“...reclusiveness itself may be a kind of violence. It leaves an abyss for us to throw our fantasies into.”

“A fair vision had welcomed him in this land of disease.”

“In a fallen world marked by human depravity and deep-seated sin, in a world where Hitler and Stalin had recruited millions of followers to commit mass murder, love must harness power and seek justi...”

“Is there shame in living off your fellow man or being unable to take care ofyourself? You bet. But a person whos willing to work and pay their own waycan at least take pride in that even if they ca...”

“A true encounter with the living God will break the spirit of religiosity, empty man of his pride and conform even the most vile and wicked into a living vessel for His glory.”

“He has come to the most dreadful conclusion a literary man can come to, the conclusion that the ordinary view is the right one. It is only the last and wildest kind of courage that can stand on a t...”