Art is the symbol of the two noblest human efforts: to construct and to refrain from destruction.

The contradictions the mind comes up against, these are the only realities, the criterion of the real. There is no contradiction in what is imaginary. Contradiction is the test of necessity.

There is something else which has the power to awaken us to the truth. It is the works of writers of genius. They give us, in the guise of fiction, something equivalent to the actual density of the real, that density which life offers us every day but which we are unable to grasp because we are amusing ourselves with lies.

The supernatural virtue of justice consists of behaving exactly as though there were equality when one is the stronger in an unequal relationship.

Modern war appears as a struggle led by all the State apparatuses and their general staffs against all men old enough to bear arms.

Contradiction is the lever of transcendence.

A work of art has an author and yet, when it is perfect, it has something which is anonymous about it.