You have certainly observed the curious fact that a given word which is perfectly clear when you hear it or use it in everyday language, and which does not give rise to any difficulty when it is engaged in the rapid movement of an ordinary sentence becomes magically embarrassing, introduces a strange resistance, frustrates any effort at definition as soon as you take it out of circulation to examine it separately and look for its meaning after taking away its instantaneous function.

Every man expects some miracle — either from his mind or from his body or from someone else or from events.

A bad poem is one that vanishes into meaning.

It is a law of nature that we defend ourselves from one affection only by means of another.

Every social system is more or less against nature, and at every moment nature is at work to reclaim her rights.

Interruption, incoherence, surprise are the ordinary conditions of our life. They have even become real needs for many people, whose minds are no longer fed by anything but sudden changes and constantly renewed stimuli. We can no longer bear anything that lasts. We no longer know how to make boredom bear fruit. So the whole question comes down to this: can the human mind master what the human mind has made?

In the physical world, one cannot increase the size or quantity of anything without changing its quality. Similar figures exist only in pure geometry.