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.

We only really know what is new, what suddenly introduces to our sensibility a change of tone which strikes us, that for which habit has not yet substituted its pale fac-similes.

And wasn't my mind also like another crib in the depths of which I felt I remained ensconced, even in order to watch what was happening outside? When I saw an external object, my awareness that I was seeing it would remain between me and it, lining it with a thin spiritual border that prevented me from ever directly touching its substance; it would volatize in some way before I could make contact with it, just as an incandescent body brought near a wet object never touches its moisture because it is always preceded by a zone of evaporation.

Friendship is in the end no more than: " . . . a lie which seeks to make us believe that we are not irremediably alone."

Our memory is like a shop in the window of which is exposed now one, now another photograph of the same person. And as a rule the most recent exhibit remains for some time the only one to be seen.

A man of letters, merely by reading a phrase, can estimate exactly the literary merit of its author.

You can't learn the truth about a man's intentions by asking him.