“The widower reviewed his past in a sunless light which was intensified by the greyness of the November twilight, whilst the bells subtly impregnated the surrounding atmosphere with the melody of sounds that faded like the ashes of dead years.”

“Bruges was his dead wife. And his dead wife was Bruges. The two were united in a like destiny. It was Bruges-la-Morte, the dead town entombed in its stone quais, with the arteries of its canals cold once the great pulse of the sea had ceased beating in them.”

“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.”

“As he walked, the sad faded leaves were driven pitilessly around him by the wind, and under the mingling influences of autumn and evening, a craving for the quietude of the grave … overtook him with unwanted intensity.”

“The pale water which goes away along paths of silence.”

“The beauty of sorrow is superior to the beauty of life.”

“Dissonance is as fatal in ailments of the mind as it is in those of the body.”