He would be able to create a scent that was not merely human, but super human, an angels scent, so indescribably good and vital that who ever smelt it would be enchanted and with his whole heart would have to love him.

Whatever the art or whatever the craft - and make a note of this before you go - talent means next to nothing, while experience, acquired in humility and with hard work, means everything.

He was so full of disgust, disgust at the world and at himself, that he could not weep.

Siempre había creído que era del mundo en general de lo que tenia que apartarse, pero ahora lo veía claro no se trataba del mundo, si no de los seres humanos. Al parecer, en el mundo, en el mundo sin hombres, la vida era soportable

Until now he had thought that it was the world in general he had wanted to squirm away from. But it was not the world, it was the people in it.

These Diderots and d'Alemberts and Voltaires and Rousseaus or whatever names these scribblers have - there are even clerics among them and gentleman of noble birth! - they've finally managed to infect the whole society with their perfidious fidgets, with their sheer delight in discontent and their unwillingness to be satisfied with anything in this world, in short, with the boundless chaos that reigns inside their own heads!

Besides which, he was a man who did not let his decisions be made for him by other people, not by a crowd thrown into panic, and certainly not by some anonymous piece of criminal trash.

Odours have a power of persuasion stronger than that of words, appearances, emotions or will. The persuasive power of an odour cannot be fended off, it enters into us like breath into our lungs, it fills us up, imbues us totally. There is no remedy for it.

He was in very truth his own God, and a more splendid God than the God that stank of incense and was quartered in churches.