Christianity, no doubt, has robbed us of much--but then it has given us sorrow; it has taken away the sun, but it has brought us the stars.

It is only in the starlight of sorrow that we become conscious of other worlds.

The sun flatters our own little world with the illusion of a transitory importance; the stars show it its place in the universe, and teach it a nobler meaning for itself.
No consciousness of his gifts had ever given Theophil any such sense of his belonging to the chosen and dedicated minority of mankind as this initiation into the Secret Society of Sorrow.

He had been chosen to represent a sacred order.

He stood for no lesser interests than those of Love and Death.