What eludes logic is the most precious element in us, and one can draw nothing from a syllogism that the mind has not put there in advance.

The true hypocrite is the one who ceases to perceive his deception, the one who lies with sincerity.

The wise man is he who constantly wonders afresh.

The individual never asserts himself more than when he forgets himself.

Enduring fame is promised only to those writers who can offer to successive generations a substance constantly renewed; for every generation arrives upon the scene with its own particular hunger.

Then you think that one can keep a hopeless love in one's heart for so long as that?...And that life can breathe upon it every day, without extinguishing it?

Obsessions of the Orient, of the desert, of its ardor and its emptiness, of the shadows of palm gardens, of the garments white and wide - obsessions where the senses go berserk, where nerves are exasperated, and which made me, at the onset of each night, believe sleep impossible.