Childhood lasts all through life.

To go upstairs in the word house is to withdraw step by step; while to go down to the cellar is to dream.

For in the end, the irreality function functions as well in the face of man as in the face of the cosmos. What would we know of others if we did not imagine things?

Any comparison diminishes the expressive qualities of the terms of the comparison.

Of course, any simplification runs the risk of mutilating reality; but it helps us establish perspectives.

The psychology of the alchemist is that of reveries trying to constitute themselves in experiments on the exterior world. A double vocabulary must be established between reverie and experiment. The exaltation of the names of substances is the preamble to experiments on the "exalted" substances.

This word "description" may be disconcerting when used to refer to what is generally called a translation. But when one wishes to render a verbal creation (as opposed to a didactic statement) from one language to another, he is confronted with two equally unsatisfactory choices. He may, according to his talents, elaborate a similar, but never identical creation, or he may describe that creation as completely as possible in his own language.