Our image of happiness is indissolubly bound up with the image of the past.

Bourgeois existence is the regime of private affairs . . . and the family is the rotten, dismal edifice in whose closets and crannies the most ignominious instincts are deposited. Mundane life proclaims the total subjugation of eroticism to privacy.

For only that which we knew and practiced at age 15 will one day constitute our attraction. And one thing, therefore, can never be made good: having neglected to run away from home.

To the lover the loved one always appears as solitary.

In the fields with which we are concerned, knowledge comes only in flashes. The text is the thunder rolling long afterward.

All human knowledge takes the form of interpretation.

During long periods of history, the mode of human sense perception changes with humanity’s entire mode of existence. The manner in which human sense perception is organized, the medium in which it is accomplished, is determined not only by nature but by historical circumstances as well