“to live means to lack something at every moment”

“I have made a similar suggestion for poetry: that one should approach it as pure sonority, reading and rereading it as a sort of music, and should not introduce meanings or intentions into the diction before clearly grasping the system of sounds that every poem must offer on pain of nonexistence.”

“Latent in every man is a venom of amazing bitterness, a black resentment; something that curses and loathes life, a feeling of being trapped, of having trusted and been fooled, of being helpless prey to impotent rage, blind surrender, the victim of a savage, ruthless power that gives and takes away, enlists a man, drops him, promises and betrays, and -crowning injury- inflicts on him the humiliation of feeling sorry for himself.”

“What others think of us would be of little moment did it not, when known, so deeply tinge what we think of ourselves.”

“But Socrates cannot but have been meditating upon something?... Can he ever remain solitary with himself -- and silent to his very soul!”

“I am not averse to generalizing the notion of "modern" to designate a certain way of life, rather than making it purely a synonym of 'contemporary'. There are moments and places in history to which 'we moderns' could return without too greatly disturbing the harmony of those times, without seeming objects infinitely curious and conspicuous... creatures shocking, dissonant, and unassailable.”

“I think of the presence and of the habits of mortals in this so fluid stream, and reflect that I was among them, striving to see all things just as I see them at this very moment. I then placed Wisdom in the eternal station which now is ours. But from here all is unrecognizable. Truth is before us, and we no longer understand anything at all.”