"AN OLD MAN named Chunglang, which means ‘Master Rock’, owned a small farm in the mountains."

"Once upon a time an artist who had painted a small and very beautiful picture placed it so that he could see it in the mirror..."

"In the woods too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of life, is always a child."

"« Assez ! » me disais-je à moi-même, en gravissant péniblement le flanc d'une montagne escarpée..."

"Je m’étais trouvé, à l’étranger, dans maintes nuits obscures, mais jamais dans une nuit plus obscure."

« “No man is an island,” said John Donne. I feel we are all islands — in a common sea. »

"Maïa ! Is she indeed the true goddess ? Hindoo wisdom long ago regarded the world as the dream of Brahma."

"I was about to light a cigarette, the cigarette of satisfaction, when, at that very moment, a laugh burst out behind me."

"S. Augustine. : You are the victim of a terrible plague of the soul — melancholy ; which the moderns call accidie..."

"Civilization, our drug, has so poisoned us that our dependence on it is an addiction, a mixture of ecstasy and curse."

"That day, Des Esseintes took this incomparable book from his shelves and handled it devotedly..."

"There is, no doubt, a perfect analogy between the life of the human and that of the vegetable, both of the body and the mind."

"It looked as though it had been built for all time. But this was not so. For it was built on sand, and of sand; and the tide was coming..."

"The black trees stood around me, rustling, and I loved them. Stars shone down from above, and I breathed in their white salutation."

"Who am I ? How did I get into the world ? Why was I not asked about it ?"

"When I grew up it seemed to me that the one advantage of living in London was that nobody ever wanted me to come out for a walk."

"Je viens d'accomplir une plaisanterie complètement idiote, mais dont le souvenir me causera longtemps encore de vives allégresses."

"Now Ziegler felt deeply horrified, for ever since he swallowed the magic pill, he had understood the language of animals."

"La philosophie, dont je crois utile et possible aux âmes passionnées d'adopter les secours, est de la nature la plus relevée."

"The fact that the student enjoyed his happiness only in a dream should not diminish it ..."