Are not the thoughts of the dying often turned towards the practical, painful, obscure, visceral aspect, towards the "seamy side" of death which is, as it happens, the side that death actually presents to them and forces them to feel, and which far more closely resembles a crushing burden, a difficulty in breathing, a destroying thirst, than the abstract idea to which we are accustomed to give the name of Death?

There is not a woman in the world the possession of whom is as precious as that of the truths which she reveals to us by causing us to suffer.

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.

Beautiful books are always written in a sort of foreign language.

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.

Even from the simplest, the most realistic point of view, the countries which we long for occupy, at any given moment, a far larger place in our actual life than the country in which we happen to be.

A powerful idea communicates some of its strength to him who challenges it.