To be surprised, to wonder, is to begin to understand. This is the sport, the luxury, special to the intellectual man.

Life is a terrible conflict, a grandiose and atrocious confluence. Hunting submerges man deliberately in that formidable mystery and therefore contains something of religious rite and emotion in which homage is paid to what is divine, transcendent, and in the laws of Nature.

When you are fed up with the troublesome present, you take your gun, whistle for your dog, go out to the mountain, and, without further ado, give yourself the pleasure during a few hours or a few days of being "Paleolithic."

The form most contradictory to human life that can appear among the human species is the "self-satisfied man."

And this is the simple truth - that to live is to feel oneself lost. He who accepts it has already begun to find himself to be on firm ground.

Effort is only effort when it begins to hurt.

The librarian's mission should be, not like up to now, a mere handling of the book as an object, but rather a know how (mise au point) of the book as a vital function.