“We blame the church when she is saturated with intrigues, we despisethe spiritual which is harsh toward the temporal; but we everywherehonor the thoughtful man.”

“We all know the artfulness with which a dropped coin hides itself, and the job we have to find it again. There are thoughts which play the same trick on us, rolling into a buried corner of our minds; and there it is, they've gone forever, we can't put our finger on them.”

“Certainly we talk to ourselves; there is no thinking being who has not experienced that. One could even say that the word is never a more magnificent mystery than when, within a man, it travels from his thought to his conscience and returns from his conscience to his thought. This is the only sense of the words, so often used in this chapter, “he said,” “he exclaimed”; we say to ourselves, we speak to ourselves, we exclaim within ourselves, without breaking the external silence. There is great tumult within; everything within us speaks, except the tongue. The realities of the soul, though not visible and palpable, are nonetheless realities. (pg. 226)”

“Often when we think we are knotting one thread, we are tying quite another.”

“Each of our passions, even love, has a stomach that must not be overloaded. We must in everything write the word 'finis' in time; we must restrain ourselves, when it becomes urgent; we must draw the bolt on the appetite, play a fantasia on the violin, then break the strings with our own hand. The Wise man is he who knows when and how to stop.”

“Particularly at those moments when we have the sorest need of grasping the sharp realities of life do the threads of thought snap off in the brain. ”

“In vain we chisel, as best we can, the mysterious block of which our life is made, the black vein of destiny reappears continuously.”