The philosopher aspires to explain away all mysteries, to dissolve them into light. Mystery on the other hand is demanded and pursued by the religious instinct; mystery constitutes the essence of worship, the power of proselytism.

Dreams are excursions into the limbo of things, a semi-deliverance from the human prison.

Put personal ambition away from you, and then you will find consolation in living or in dying, whatever may happen to you.

It is by teaching that we teach ourselves, by relating that we observe, by affirming that we examine, by showing that we look, by writing that we think, by pumping that we draw water into the well.

The only substance properly so called is the soul.

[T]he habit of scientific analysis ... exhausts the material offered to it.

The obscure only exists that it may cease to exist. In it lies the opportunity of all victory and all progress. Whether it call itself fatality, death, night, or matter, it is the pedestal of life, of light, of liberty and the spirit. For it represents resistance -- that is to say, the fulcrum of all activity, the occasion for its development and its triumph.