59 Quotes by Georges Rodenbach

...without knowing why, he yielded to the temptation of those lips and flung onto them, eating them, partaking of their sacrament... Eucharist of love with a red host!

He felt more cheerful, revived by the journey, released from himself and his poor life, uplifted by thoughts of the infinite.

Now Borluut was seeing it from close to. And to its very end, it seemed, from the way the line of the horizon merged into the infinite. It was bare. Not one ship. It ground out a dirge, in a glaucous tone, opaque, uniform. One sensed that all the colours were below, but faded. At the edge, the waves spilling onto the shore made a sound of washerwomen beating sheets of white linen, a whole supply of shrouds for future storms.

Mevr. Cadzand feared for her son who, with his responsive nature, as sensitive as a hothouse plant, was more exposed. Fortunately religion is a means of protection, of diverting energies into other channels. Hans's mother was glad that they had cultivated his piety at the college and that she herself, with altars in the month of Mary, novenas, candles lit, rosaries recited and pilgrimages made, had further developed this faith, which keeps men safe through the fear of Hell.

Wilhelmine chatted on, chatted as if emboldened by the gathering dusk. She wasn't afraid any more. She didn't blush any more. And in this chatter without lamplight the dark seemed to suffuse her words as well. Her voice deepened. Darkness can have a strange influence. It has something religious about it and makes one speak in a low voice, as if in a church.

The pale water which goes away along paths of silence.

They sensed that nothing needed to be said. In silence, minds understand each other.

Does it not sometimes happen in life that our actions are solely for an enemy, so as to stand up to him, to confound him, to humiliate him by a finer effort or a more difficult victory? Without him we might perhaps give up. Having an enemy stimulates us, gives us strength. In him we hope to defeat the universe and the malevolence of fate.

Nothing goes unobserved in that strict town where people lack occupation. Malicious curiosity there has even invented what is known as a busybody, that is a double mirror fixed to the outside of the windowledge so that the streets can be monitored even from inside the houses, all the comings and goings watched, a kind of trap to catch all the exits and entrances the encounters and gestures that do not realize they are being observed, the looks that prove everything.