Status Updates From Ritratti immaginari

'... all this, for most men so powerful a link to existence, only set him on the thought of escape... into a formless and nameless infinite world, quite evenly grey...

'To restore tabula rasa, then, by a continual effort at self-effacement! Actually proud at times of his curious, well-reasoned nihilism, he could but regard what is called the business of life as no better than a trifling and wearisome delay.'

'To me, Denys seemed to have been a real resident at Auxerre. On days of a certain atmosphere, when the trace of the Middle Age comes out, like old marks in the stones in rainy weather, I seemed actually to have seen the tortured figure there—to have met Denys l'Auxerrois in the streets.'

'He has been a sick man all his life. He was always a seeker after something in the world that is there in no satisfying measure, or not at all.'

'With myself, how to get through time becomes sometimes the question,—unavoidably; though it strikes me as a thing unspeakably sad in a life so short as ours.'