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.

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.

A work in which there are theories is like an object which still has the ticket that shows its price.

It is not because other people are dead that our affection for them grows faint, it is because we ourselves are dying.

Even the simple act that we call "going to visit a person of our acquaintance" is in part an intellectual act. We fill the physical appearance of the person we see with all the notions we have about him, and in the totality of our impressions about him, these notions play the most important role.

Thanks to art, instead of seeing one world only, our own, we see that world multiply itself and we have at our disposal as many worlds as there are original artists, worlds more different one from the other than those which revolve in infinite space, worlds which, centuries after the extinction of the fire from which their light first emanated, whether it is called Rembrandt or Vermeer, send us still each one its special radiance.

A woman whom we need and who makes us suffer elicits from us a whole gamut of feelings far more profound and vital than a man of genius who interests us.