We feel in one world, we think and name in another. Between the two we can set up a system of references, but we cannot fill in the gap.

As soon as he ceased to be mad he became merely stupid. There are maladies we must not seek to cure because they alone protect us from others that are more serious.

My destination is no longer a place, rather a new way of seeing.

At the heart of our friendly or purely social relations, there lurks a hostility momentarily cured but recurring by fits and starts.

Let us leave pretty women to men devoid of imagination.

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.

The soldier is convinced that a certain indefinitely extendable time period is accorded him before he is killed, the burglar before he is caught, men in general, before they must die. That is the amulet which preserves individuals — and sometimes populations — not from danger, but from the fear of danger, in reality from the belief in danger, which in some cases allows them to brave it without being brave. Such a confidence, just as unfounded, supports the lover who counts on a reconciliation, a letter.