Our intellect is not the most subtle, the most powerful, the most appropriate, instrument for revealing the truth. It is life that, little by little, example by example, permits us to see that what is most important to our heart, or to our mind, is learned not by reasoning but through other agencies. Then it is that the intellect, observing their superiority, abdicates its control to them upon reasoned grounds and agrees to become their collaborator and lackey.

According to a charming law of nature which is evident even in the most sophisticated societies, we live in complete ignorance of whatever we love.

The only true voyage of discovery, . . . would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes.

In a separation it is the one who is not really in love who says the more tender things.

How paradoxical it is to search reality for the pictures that are stored in one's memory.

The inertia of the mind urges it to slide down the easy slope of imagination, rather than to climb the steep slope of introspection.

But to ask pity of our body is like discoursing in front of an octopus, for which our words can have no more meaning than the sound of the tides, and with which we should be appalled to find ourselves condemned to live.