No existence can be validly fulfilled if it is limited to itself.

The body is the instrument of our hold on the world.

Old age was growing inside me. It kept catching my eye from the depths of the mirror. I was paralyzed sometimes as I saw it making its way toward me so steadily when nothing inside me was ready for it.

The father's life is surrounded by mysterious prestige: the hours he spends in the home, the room where he works, the objects around him, his occupations, his habits, have a sacred character. It is he who feeds the family, is the one in charge and the head. Usually he works outside the home, and it is through him that the household communicates with the rest of the world: he is the embodiment of this adventurous, immense, difficult, and marvelous world; he is transcendence, he is God.

Hegel held that the two sexes were of necessity different, the one being active and the other passive, and of course the female would be the passive one.

I was very fond of Lagneau’s phrase: “I have no comfort but in my absolute despair.

immortality is a terrible curse.