Bookrate

No matter how much you keep encouraging someone who is blindfolded to stare through the cloth, he still won't see a thing.".

If a man has his eyes bound, you can encourage him as much as you like to stare through the bandage, but he'll never see anything

This village belongs to the Castle, and whoever lives here or passes the night here does so in a manner of speaking in the Castle itself. Nobody may do that without the Count's permission.

There's no quiet place here on earth for our love, not in the village and not anywhere else, so I picture a grave, deep and narrow, in which we embrace as if clamped together, I bury my face against you, you yours against me, and no one will ever see us.

One must fight to get to the top, especially if one starts at the bottom.

I dream of a grave, deep and narrow, where we could clasp each other in our arms as with clamps, and I would hide my face in you and you would hide your face in me, and nobody would ever see us any more

Officials are highly educated but one-sided; in his own department an official can grasp whole trains of thought from a single word, but let him have something from another department explained to him... he won't understand a word of it.