Ignorance is a treasure of infinite price that most men squander, when they should cherish its least fragments; some ruin it by educating themselves, others, unable to so much as conceive of making use of it, let it waste away. Quite on the contrary, we should search for it assiduously in what we think we know best. Leaf through a dictionary or try to make one, and you will find that every word covers and masks a well so bottomless that the questions you toss into it arouse no more than an echo.

What Degas called 'a way of seeing' must consequently bear a wide enough interpretation to include way of being, power, knowledge, and will.

To see is to forget the name of the thing one sees.

History is the science of what never happens twice.

Liberty is the hardest test that one can inflict on a people. To know how to be free is not given equally to all men and all nations.

Love is acting stupid together.

A poet's work consists less in seeking words for his ideas than in seeking ideas for his words and predominant rhythms.