“To err is human, to persist in error is diabolical.”

“errare humanum est, sed perseverare diabolicum: 'to err is human, but to persist (in the mistake) is diabolical.”

“Harton thought that if one squeezed humanity through a wine press, its essence would flow out as drops of policemen.”

“Human life, distinct from juridical existence, existing as it does on aglobe isolated in celestial space, from night to day and from one countryto another—human life cannot in any way be limited to the closedsystems assigned to it by reasonable conceptions. The immense travailof recklessness, discharge, and upheaval that constitutes life could beexpressed by stating that life starts with the deficit of these systems;at least what it allows in the way of order and reserve has meaningonly from the moment when the ordered and reserved forces liberateand lose themselves for ends that cannot be subordinated to any thingone can account for. It is only by such insubordination—even if it isimpoverished—that the human race ceases to be isolated in the unconditionalsplendor of material things.”

“Once the frontiers of horror have been crossed, one will pass from form to form beyond the human and from metamorphosis to metamorphosis to accomplish, in the anguish of an impossible return, the most terrible journey to the depths of darkness.”

“To err is human, to repent divine; to persist devilish.”

“Dead towns are the Cathedrals of Silence. They, too, have their gargoyles, singular figures, exaggerated, dubious, set in high profile. They stand out from the mass of grey, which takes all it has in the way of character, its twitchings of stagnant life from them. Some have been distorted by solitude, others grimace with a directionless fervour; here there are masks of cherished lust, there faces ceaselessly sculpted and furrowed by mysticism. Human gargoyles, the only figures of interest in this monotonous population.”