“There was always an uncertain promise dangling in the future like a golden fruit hanging from some fantastic bough.”

“The most glorious moments in your life are not the so-called days of success, but rather those days when out of dejection and despair you feel rise in you a challenge to life, and the promise of future accomplishments.”

“The denigration of those we love always detaches us from them in some degree. Never touch your idols: the gilding will stick to your fingers.”

“She would have liked not to be alive, or to be always asleep.”

“Haven't you ever happened to come across in a book some vague notion that you've had, some obscure idea that returns from afar and that seems to express completely your most subtle feelings?”

“But that which fanaticism formerly promised to the elect, science now accomplishes for all men. ”

“Has it ever happened to you," Léon went on, "to come across some vague idea of one's own in a book, some dim image that comes to you from afar, and as the completest expression of your own slightest sentiment?”