To achieve accurate knowledge of others, if such a thing were possible, we could only ever arrive at it through the slow and unsure recognition of our own initial optical inaccuracies. However, such knowledge is not possible: for, while our vision of others is being adjusted, they, who are not made of mere brute matter, are also changing; we think we have managed to see them more clearly, but they shift; and when we believe we have them fully in focus, it is merely our older images of them that we have clarified, but which are themselves already out of date.

In love, happiness is an abnormal state.

Any mental activity is easy if it need not be subjected to reality.

Like many intellectuals, he was incapable of saying a simple thing in a simple way.

Everything great in the world comes from neurotics. They alone have founded our religions and composed our masterpieces.

One must never miss an opportunity of quoting things by others which are always more interesting than those one thinks up oneself.

What artists call posterity is the posterity of the work of art.