Industry has operated against the artisan in favor of the idler, and also in favor of capital and against labor. Any mechanical invention whatsoever has been more harmful to humanity than a century of war.

Science is the only truth and it is the great lie. It knows nothing, and people think it knows everything. It is misrepresented. People think that science is electricity, automobilism, and dirigible balloons. It is something very different. It is life devouring itself. It is the sensibility transformed into intelligence. It is the need to know stifling the need to live. It is the genius of knowledge vivisecting the vital genius.

In order to understand life it is not only necessary not to be indifferent to men, but not to be indifferent to flocks, to trees. One should be indifferent to nothing.

To write well, to have style ... is to paint. The master faculty of style is therefore the visual memory. If a writer does not see what he describes-countrysides and figures, movements and gestures-how could he have a style, that is originality?

The ever-present phenomenon ceases to exist for our senses. It was a city dweller, or a prisoner, or a blind man suddenly given his sight, who first noted natural beauty.

The terrible thing about the quest for truth is that you find it.

Autumn is as joyful and sweet as an untimely end.