“He is ugly and sad... but he is all love.”

“This was his world, he said to himself, the sad, oppressive world that God had provided for him, and he was responsible to it.”

“What does he say?' he asked.'He’s very sad,’ Úrsula answered, ‘because he thinks that you’re going to die.''Tell him,' the colonel said, smiling, 'that a person doesn’t die when he should but when he can.”

“Thinking that it would console him, she took a piece of charcoal and erased the innumerable loves that he still owed her for, and she voluntarily brought up her own most solitary sadnesses so as not to leave him alone in his weeping.”

“Intrigued by that enigma, he dug so deeply into her sentiments that in search of interest he found love, because by trying to make her love him he ended up falling in love with her.”

“She knew that he loved her above all else, more than anything in the world, but only for his own sake.”

“He was aware he did not love her. He had married her because he liked her haughtiness, her seriousness, her strength, and also because of some vanity on his part, but as she kissed him for the first time he was sure there would be obstacle to their inventing true love.”