The reason why life may be judged to be trivial although at certain moments it seems to us so beautiful is that we form our judgment, ordinarily, not on the evidence of life itself but of those quite different images which preserve nothing of life-and therefore we judge it disparagingly.

For one cannot change, that is to say become another person, while continuing to acquiesce to the feelings of the person one no longer is.

We don't receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us.

Time passes, and little by little everything that we have spoken in falsehood becomes true.

Every reader, as he reads, is actually the reader of himself. The writer's work is only a kind of optical instrument he provides the reader so he can discern what he might never have seen in himself without this book. The reader's recognition in himself of what the book says is the proof of the book's truth.

The memory of a particular image is but regret for a particular moment.

Most of our faculties lie dormant because they can rely upon Habit, which knows what there is to be done and has no need of their services.