It is quite true what Philosophy says: that Life must be understood backwards. But that makes one forget the other saying: that it must be lived—forwards. The more one ponders this, the more it comes to mean that life in the temporal existence never becomes quite intelligible, precisely because at no moment can I find complete quiet to take the backward- looking position.

Everyone looks the same to me in a photograph: stupid.

Which is more difficult, to awaken one who sleeps or to awaken one who, awake, dreams that he is awake?

Theology sits rouged at the window and courts philosophy's favor, offering to sell her charms to it.

Your own tactic is to train yourself in the art of becoming enigmatic to everybody. My young friend, suppose there was no one who troubld himself to guess your riddle--what joy, then, would you have in it?

If a man cannot forget, he will never amount to much.

A man's personality is matured only when he appropriates the truth, whether it is spoken by Balaam's ass or a sniggering wag or an apostle or an angel.