The man in ecstasy and the man drowning - both throw up their arms. The first to signify harmony, the second to signify strife with the elements.

My guiding principle is this: Guilt is never to be doubted.

If the book we are reading does not wake us, as with a fist hammering on our skull, why then do we read it?

True undoubting is the teacher's part, continual undoubting the part of the pupil.

Hiding places there are innumerable, escape is only one, but possibilities of escape, again, are as many as hiding places.

All knowledge, the totality of all questions and all answers, is contained in the dog. If one could but realize this knowledge, if one could but bring it into the light of day, if we dogs would but own that we know infinitely more than we admit to ourselves!

The old incapacity. Interrupted my writing for barely ten days and already cast out. Once again prodigious efforts stand before me. You have to dive down, as it were, and sink more rapidly than that which sinks in advance of you.