54 quotes
Reason, sometimes, seems to me to be the faculty our soul possesses of understanding nothing about our body!
L'Âme et la danse (1921)
Most people in reasoning, dear Phaedrus, use notions that not only are "ready-made," but have actually been made by nobody. No one is responsible for them, and so they serve everyone badly.
Eupalinos ou l'architecte (1921)
My soul is nothing now but the dream dreamt by matter struggling with itself!
L'Âme et la danse (1921)
That which has always been accepted by everyone, everywhere, is almost certain to be false.
Tel Quel (1943)
To construct oneself, to know oneself—are these two distinct acts or not?
Eupalinos ou l'architecte (1921)
And do not humans strive in a thousand ways to fill or to break the eternal silence of those infinite spaces that affright them?
Eupalinos ou l'architecte (1921)
Nothing is rarer than giving no importance to things that have none.
The greatest liberty is born of the greatest rigor.
Eupalinos ou l'architecte (1921)
What is most beautiful is of necessity tyrannical.
Eupalinos ou l'architecte (1921)
The universe is built on a plan the profound symmetry of which is somehow present in the inner structure of our intellect.
I cannot think that there exists more than one Sovereign Good.
Eupalinos ou l'architecte (1921)
What is there more mysterious than clarity?… What more capricious than the way in which light and shade are distributed over hours and over men?
Eupalinos ou l'architecte (1921)
Is not to meditate to deepen oneself in Order?
Dialogue de l'arbre (1943)
A work is never completed except by some accident such as weariness, satisfaction, the need to deliver, or death: for, in relation to who or what is making it, it can only be one stage in a series of inner transformations.
Man's deepest glances are those that go out to the void. They converge beyond the All.
Eupalinos ou l'architecte (1921)
Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.
Tel Quel (1943)
Knowledge must grow or perish; and it can grow only in a free mind, that is to say a mind which is sufficiently strong to create its own discipline.
The folly of mistaking a paradox for a discovery, a metaphor for a proof, a torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths, and oneself for an oracle, is inborn in us.
Introduction to the Method of Leonardo da Vinci (1895)
Collect all the facts that can be collected about the life of Racine and you will never learn from them the art of his verse.
Introduction to the Method of Leonardo da Vinci (1895)
Poe is the only impeccable writer. He was never mistaken.