“A shadow is hard to seize by the throat and dash to the ground.”

“The unforeseen, that strange, haughty power which plays with man, had seized Gauvain and held him fast.”

“He who contemplates the depths of Paris is seized with vertigo.Nothing is more fantastic. Nothing is more tragic.Nothing is more sublime.”

“To sacrifice the world to paradise is to let slip the prey for the shadow.”

“The four walls of the living redoubt had fallen, hardly could a quivering be detected here and there among the corpses; and thus the French legions, grander than the Roman legions, expired at Mont-Saint-Jean on ground soaked in rain and blood, in the somber wheatfields, at the spot where today at four in the morning, whistling, and gaily whipping up his horse, Joseph drives by with the mail from Nivelles.”

“Our joys have shadows. The perfect smile belongs to God alone.”

“It is grievous for a man to leave behind him a shadow in his own shape.”