The gods are alone, and when they stroll, by chance, on earth, they are pathological cases or buffoons, or histrions... who are despised!

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 own book yet! I always found myself alone when we were two. One is not weak when one remains master of one’s self in the midst of the most stupefying pleasures.

Although he had always been a gentleman till then, he had ‘caught his century’, a disease impossible to analyze but by this simple phrase.

My love”, she whispered, so low she sounded to Jacques as if she were speaking from the bottom of an abyss, “now we shall belong to each other in a strange country that you do not know. It is the country of madmen but not the country of brutes. I am taking away your vulgar senses and giving you others more refined.

I want a dress the color of suffering.

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 echoes of its vibration.

The terrible poetry of human nudity, I understand it at last, I who tremble for the first time in trying to read it with blasé eyes.

Avarice is a closed door, you don't know what's happening behind it, & before knocking you feel anxious.

Although he had always been a gentleman till then, he had 'caught his century', a disease impossible to analyze but by this simple phrase.

The gods are alone, and when they stroll, by chance, on earth, they are pathological cases or buffoons, or histrions...who are despised!