Any translation which intends to perform a transmitting function cannot transmit anything but information-hence, something inessential. This is the hallmark of bad translations.

He who observes etiquette but objects to lying is like someone who dresses fashionably but wears no vest.

If sleep is the apogee of physical relaxation, boredom is the apogee of mental relaxation. Boredom is the dream bird that hatches the egg of experience.

Opinions are to the vast apparatus of social existence what oil is to machines: one does not go up to a turbine and pour machine oil over it; one applies a little to hidden spindles and joints that one has to know.

Every image of the past that is not recognised by the present as one of its own threatens to disappear irretrievably.

Living substance conquers the frenzy of destruction only in the ecstasy of procreation.

The work of memory collapses time.