To perceive means to immobilize. To say this is to say that we seize, in the act of perception, something which outruns perception itself.

The emotion felt by a man in the presence of nature certainly counts for something in the origin of religions.

To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.

In laughter we always find an unavowed intention to humiliate and consequently to correct our neighbour.

Some other faculty than the intellect is necessary for the apprehension of reality.

The idea of the future, pregnant with an infinity of possibilities, is thus more fruitful than the future itself, and this is why we find more charm in hope than in possession, in dreams than in reality.

The prestige of the Nobel Prize is due to many causes, but in particular to its twofold idealistic and international character: idealistic in that it has been designed for works of lofty inspiration; international in that it is awarded after the production of different countries has been minutely studied and the intellectual balance sheet of the whole world has been drawn up. Free from all other considerations and ignoring any but intellectual values, the judges have deliberately taken their place in what the philosophers have called a community of the mind.