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.

Like ultraviolet rays memory shows to each man in the book of life a script that invisibly and prophetically glosses the text.

I came into the world under the sign of Saturn -- the star of the slowest revolution, the planet of detours and delays.

Nothing is poorer than a truth expressed as it was thought. Committed to writing in such cases, it is not even a bad photograph. Truth wants to be startled abruptly, at one stroke, from her self-immersion, whether by uproar, music or cries for help.

The art of the critic in a nutshell: to coin slogans without betraying ideas. The slogans of an inadequate criticism peddle ideas to fashion.

Counsel woven into the fabric of real life is wisdom.

Ownership is the most intimate relationship that one can have to objects. Not that they come alive in him; it is he who lives in them.