“As for us, we who do not believe what these women believe, but live like them by faith, never could look without a sort of tender and religious awe, a kind of pity full of envy, at those devoted beings, trembling yet confident-those humble yet august souls, who date to live on the brink of the great mystery, waiting between the world closed to them and heaven not yet opened; turned toward the daylight not yet seen, with only the happiness of thinking that they know where it is; their aspirations directed toward the abyss and the unknown, their gaze fixes on the motionless obscurity, kneeling, dismayed, stupefied, shuddering, and half carried of sometimes by the deep breath of Eternity.”

“This first glance of a soul which does not yet know itself is like dawn in the heavens; it is the awakening of something radiant and unknown.”

“He had not yet lived long enough to have discovered that nothing is more close at hand then the impossible, and that what must be looked for is always the unforeseen.”

“Ye who suffer because ye love, love yet more. To die of love, is to live in it.”

“Happiness lies for those who cry, those who hurt, those who have searched, and those who have tried for only they can appreciate the importance of people who have touched their lives.”

“Everybody has noticed the way cats stop and loiter in a half-open door. Hasn't everyone said to a cat: For heavens sake why don't you come in? With opportunity half-open in front of them, there are men who have a similar tendency to remain undecided between two solutions, at the risk of being crushed by fate abruptly closing the opportunity. The overprudent, cats as they are, and because they are cats, sometimes run more danger than the bold”

“Monsieur Bienvenu was simply a man who accepted these mysterious questions...and who had in his soul a deep respect for the mystery which enveloped them.”