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.

Here, then, is the point at which I see the new mission of the librarian rise up incomparably higher than all those preceding. Up until the present, the librarian has been principally occupied with the book as a thing, as a material object. From now on he must give his attention to the book as a living function. He must become a policeman, master of the raging book.

The hunter who accepts the sporting code of ethics keeps his commandments in the greatest solitude, with no witness or audience other than the sharp peaks of the mountain, the roaming cloud, the stern oak, the trembling juniper, and the passing animal.

Man is a fugitive from nature.

All life is the struggle, the effort to be itself.

Since love is the most delicate and total act of a soul, it will reflect the state and nature of the soul.

These are the only genuine ideas, the ideas of the shipwrecked. All the rest is rhetoric, posturing, farce.