Without mysticism man can achieve nothing great.

I have never produced anything good except by a long succession of slight efforts.

In other people's company I felt I was dull, gloomy, unwelcome, at once bored and boring.

No encounter occured that day, and I was glad of it; I took out of my pocket a little Homer I had not opened since leaving Marseilles, reread three lines of the Odyssey, learned them by heart; then, finding sufficient sustenance in their rhythm and reveling in them at leisure, I closed the book and remained, trembling, more alive than I had thought possible, my mind numb with happiness.

The difficulty comes from this, that Christianity (Christian orthodoxy) is exclusive and that belief in its truth excludes belief in any other truth. It does not absorb; it repulses.

It is with fine sentiments that bad literature is made. Descend to the bottom of the well if you wish to see the stars.

To read a writer is for me not merely to get an idea of what he says, but to go off with him and travel in his company.