“To be perfect, one lacks only a defect.”

“It is only imperfection that complains of what is imperfect. The more perfect we are, the more gentle and quiet we become towards the defects of others.”

“For Zola, as for Huysmans, nature itself is uncanny because it is the domain of the feminine, a domain that is constitutionally defective, lacking, even pathological.”

“What at night had been perfect and ideal was by day the more or less defective real.”

“But I am not perfect in my way of putting thingsBecause I lack the divine simplicityOf being only what I appear to be.”

“Humility is the only soil in which the graces root; the lack of humility is the sufficient explanation of every defect and failure. Humility is not so much a grace or virtue along with others; it is the root of all, because it alone takes the right attitude before God, and allows Him as God to do all.”