If you emerge from that sad place with thoughts of hatred and of wrath against mankind, you are deserving of pity; if you emerge with thoughts of good-will and of peace, you are more worthy than any one of us.

There exist crab-like souls, which creep continually towards darkness, retrograding in life rather than advancing in it, employing experience to diminish themselves, growing continually worse, becoming more and more enveloped in increasing malignity, and retreating, not into old age, but into corruption.

Listen to them—the children of the night; what music they make! The wolves are not to me as they are to other men. To them the night is freedom and food; to me it is kinship and home, and I have learned to love their voices as a man loves his own blood.

Thus strangely are our souls constructed, and by such slight ligaments are we bound to prosperity or ruin. One event, one sudden and irresistible event, bursts these ligaments; and we appear a mere plaything of chance and passion.

We are punished for our refusals. Every impulse that we strive to strangle broods in the mind and poisons us… The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself…

When we are happy, we are always good, but when we are good, we are not always happy.

Each of us has heaven and hell in him, Basil.