“Love is a striking example of how little reality means to us.”

“We are all of us obliged, if we are to make reality endurable, to nurse a few little follies in ourselves.”

“But when one believes in the reality of things, making them visible by artificial means is not quite the same as feeling that they are close at hand.”

“I wondered whether music might not be the unique example of what might have been - if the invention of language, the formation of words, the analysis of ideas had not intervened - the means of communication between souls.”

“But sometimes the future is latent in us without our knowing it, and our supposedly lying words foreshadow an imminent reality.”

“I knew very well that this hope was chimerical. I was like a pauper who mingles fewer tears with his dry bread if he tells himself that at any moment a stranger will bequeath to him his fortune. We must all, in order to make reality more tolerable, keep alive in us a few little follies.”

“there are things in our souls which we know not how much they mean to us. Or rather, if we live without them, it is because, either through fear of failing or suffering, we daily postpone the moment of coming under their thrall.”