To live life well is to express life poorly; if one expresses life too well, one is living it no longer.

All knowledge is in response to a question. If there were no question, there would be no scientific knowledge. Nothing proceeds from itself.

Daydream transports the dreamer outside the immediate world to a world that bears the mark of infinity.

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.

The only possible proof of the existence of water, the most convincing and the most intimately true proof, is thirst.

The past of the soul is so distant! The soul does not live on the edge of time. It finds its rest in the universe imagined by reverie.

Of course, a psychologist would find it more direct to study the inspired poet. He would make concrete studies of inspiration in individual geniuses. But for all that, would he experience the phenomena of inspiration? His human documentation gathered from inspired poets could hardly be related, except from the exterior, in an ideal of objective observations. Comparison of inspired poets would soon make us lose sight of inspiration.