“Shame is the fruit of my vanities, and remorse, and the clearest knowledge of how the world's delight is a brief dream.”

“The world’s delight is a brief dream.”

“What is this world's delight,Lightening that mocks the night,Brief as even as bright”

“I experienced by observing my own body and my own soul that I sorely needed sin, sorely needed concupiscence, needed greed, vanity, and the most shameful despair to learn to stop resisting, to learn to love the world and stop comparing it to some world I only wished for and imagined, some sort of perfection I myself had dreamed up, but instead to let it be as it was and to love it and be happy to belong to it.”

“In paradise there is nothing to say. Eden was sacrificed not for the pleasure of a fruit, but for the pleasure of the word. Now we have shame and pain and knowledge of death and whatnot, but at least we can talk about it.”

“Foolish men always believe that a little knowledge will give them control over the world, but it is no more than a display of their vanity.”