Imagination and fiction make up more than three quarters of our real life.

No human being escapes the necessity of conceiving some good outside himself towards which his thought turns in a movement of desire, supplication, and hope.

Every kind of reward constitutes a degradation of energy.

The danger is not lest the soul should doubt whether there is any bread, but lest, by a lie, it should persuade itself that it is not hungry.

It is not the cause for which men took up arms that makes a victory more just or less, it is the order that is established when arms have been laid down.

Beauty captivates the flesh in order to obtain permission to pass right through to the soul. . . . When the feeling for beauty happens to be associated with the sight of some human being, the transference of love is made possible, at any rate in an illusory manner. But it is all the beauty of the world, it is universal beauty, for which we yearn.

In struggling against anguish one never produces serenity; the struggle against anguish only produces new forms of anguish.