Little soul, gentle and drifting, guest and companion of my body, now you will dwell below in pallid places, stark and bare; there you will abandon your play of yore. But one moment still, let us gaze together on these familiar shores, on these objects which doubtless we shall not see again....Let us try, if we can, to enter into death with open eyes.

The founding of libraries was like constructing more public granaries, amassing reserves against a spiritual winter which by certain signs, in spite of myself, I see ahead.

For me, a poet is someone who is 'in contact.' Someone through whom a current is passing.

The landscape of my days appears to be composed, like mountainous regions, of varied materials heaped up pell-mell. There I see my nature, itself composite, made up of equal parts of instinct and training. Here and there protrude the granite peaks of the inevitable, but all about is rubble from the landslips of chance.

Men who care passionately for women attach themselves at least as much to the temple and to the accessories of the cult as to their goddess herself.

age means nothing. If anything I feel that I'm still a child: eternity and childhood are my ages.

Our true birthplace is that in which we cast for the first time an intelligent eye on ourselves. My first homelands were my books.