One must be convinced to convince, to have enthusiasm to stimulate the others.

We live through myriads of seconds, yet it is always one, just one, that casts our entire inner world into turmoil, the second when (as Stendhal has described it) the internal inflorescence, already steeped in every kind of fluid, condenses and crystallizes—a magical second, like the moment of generation, and like that moment concealed in the warm interior of the individual life, invisible, untouchable, beyond the reach of feeling, a secret experienced alone. No algebra of the mind can calculate it, no alchemy of premonition divine it, and it can seldom perceive itself.

Besides, isn't it confoundedly easy to think you're a great man if you aren't burdened with the slightest idea that Rembrandt, Beethoven, Dante or Napoleon ever lived?

Hearing, seeing and understanding each other, humanity from one end of the earth to the other now lives simultaneously, omnipresent like a god thanks to its own creative ability. And, thanks to its victory over space and time, it would now be splendidly united for all time, if it were not confused again and again by that fatal delusion which causes humankind to keep on destroying this grandiose unity and to destroy itself with the same resources which gave it power over the elements.

Memory is so corrupt that you remember only what you want to; if you want to forget about something, slowly but surely you do.

All office workers are afraid of being late for work.

How terrible this darkness was, how bewildering, and yet mysteriously beautiful!