The goals we pursue are always veiled. A girl who longs for marriage longs for something she knows nothing about. The boy who hankers after fame has no idea what fame is. The thing that gives our every move its meaning is always totally unknown to us.

Anyone whose goal is 'something higher' must expect someday to suffer vertigo.

Seeing is limited by two borders: Strong light, which blinds, and total darkness.

The worst thing is not that the world is unfree, but that people have unlearned their liberty.

We live everything as it comes, without warning, like an actor going on cold.

Jealousy has the amazing power to illuminate a single person in an intense beam of light, keeping the multitude of others in total darkness.

Mankind's true moral test, its fundamental test (which lies deeply buried from view), consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals. And in this respect mankind has suffered a fundamental debacle, a debacle so fundamental that all others stem from it.