By following "the path of reverie"-a constantly downhill path-consciousness relaxes and wanders-and consequently becomes clouded. So it is never the right time, when one is dreaming, to "do phenomenology."

The reverie would not last if it were not nourished by the images of the sweetness of living, by the illusions of happiness.

The repose of sleep refreshes only the body. It rarely sets the soul at rest. The repose of the night does not belong to us. It is not the possession of our being. Sleep opens within us an inn for phantoms. In the morning we must sweep out the shadows.

Why should the actions of the imagination not be as real as those of perception?

Actually, however, life begins less by reaching upward, than by turning upon itself. But what a marvelously insidious, subtle image of life a coiling vital principle would be! And how many dreams the leftward oriented shell, or one that did not conform to the rotation of its species, would inspire!

Happy is the man who knows or even the man who remembers those silent vigils where silence itself was the sign of the communion of souls!

The cleverer I am at miniaturizing the world, the better I possess it.