My life is a dead calm, and a dead calm is monotonous." "It's better than an everlasting storm." "I wonder!" Valentine said.

"How curious that I should protect you.
I am glad it is so.

And yet, Julian, in spite of what you say, I would give a great deal to change souls with you, if only for a day or two.
You will laugh at me, but I do long to feel a real, keen temptation.
Those agonizing struggles of holy men that one reads of, what can they be like?
I can hardly imagine.

There have been ascetics who have wept, and dashed themselves down on the ground, and injured, wounded their bodies to distract their thoughts from vice.

To me they seem as madmen.
You know the story of the monk who rescued a great courtesan from her life of shame.