P 210. – Alas! my friends, the supernatural life, the life of souls, of poor souls, is not without a lot of rubbish either… There is vice, there is sin. If God opened our senses to the invisible world, to the only aspect... to the only aspect of the hideous... of the abominable proliferations of evil?

P 211. And the parish is a small church. But if the last parish died by impossibility, there would be no more church, neither big nor small, no more redemption, no more nothing – Satan would have visited his people.

– There are still many parishes in the world. But this one is dead. Maybe she's been dead a long time?

P 213. And now Evil no longer keeps you warm, resumed the priest of Fenouille. […] You feel all numb, all cold. We always talk about hellfire, but no one has seen it, my friends. Hell is cold.

P 218. Hatred of the priest is one of the deepest feelings of man, it is also one of the least known. That it is as old as the species itself no one doubts, but our age has raised it to an almost prodigious degree of refinement and excellence. It is because the lowering or the disappearance of the other powers has made the priest, yet so closely involved in social life, a more particular being, more unclassifiable than any of the magical old men whom the old world kept locked up in the background of temples, as well as sacred animals, in the sole familiarity of the gods.

P 237. This village, and many villages that resemble it, continued the still calm priest of Fenouille, all these once Christian villages, when they begin to forgot the name, assuming they were given one.

P 239. Yes, sir, the hour is coming (perhaps it has already come?) or the desire that one believes to have walled up in the depths of one's conscience and which has lost even its name there will burst its sepulcher . And, if every other outlet is closed to him, he will find one in flesh and blood – yes, sir – you will see him appear in unexpected and, I dare say, hideous, horrible forms. It will poison minds, it will pervert instincts and… who knows? why shouldn't the body, our miserable defenseless body, once again pay the ransom of the â…, of the other? a new ransom?

P 240. Yes, sir, you are free to establish an order from which God is excluded, but you have thus denounced the pact. Oh ! Doubtless the ancient alliance will not be broken in a day, the Church is attached to society, even fallen, by too many ties! The time will come, however, when, in a world organized for despair, preaching hope will be just like throwing a burning coal into the middle of a gunpowder keg.