When it is said that an object occupies a large space in the soul or even that it fills it entirely, we ought to understand by this simply that its image has altered the shade of a thousand perceptions or memories, and that in this sense it pervades them, although it does not itself come into view.

An absolute can only be given in an intuition, while all the rest has to do with analysis. We call intuition here the sympathy by which one is transported into the interior of an object in order to coincide with what there is unique andconsequently inexpressible in it. Analysis, on the contrary, is the operation which reduces the object to elements already known.

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

It is of man's essence to create materially and morally, to fabricate things and to fabricate himself. Homo faber is the definition I propose ... Homo faber, Homo sapiens, I pay my respects to both, for they tend to merge.

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

I cannot escape the objection that there is no state of mind, however simple, that does not change every moment

Homo sapiens, the only creature endowed with reason, is also the only creature to pin its existence on things unreasonable.