12 quotes
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)
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)
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)
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)
Man's deepest glances are those that go out to the void. They converge beyond the All.
Eupalinos ou l'architecte (1921)
Man can act only because he can ignore.
Eupalinos ou l'architecte (1921)
Man discerns three great things in the All: he finds there his body, he finds there his soul—and then there is the rest of the world. Between these things there is an unceasing commerce, and sometimes even a confusion arises; but always after a certain time has elapsed, these three things come to be clearly distinguished from one another.
Eupalinos ou l'architecte (1921)
Now, of all acts the most complete is that of constructing. A work demands love, meditation, obedience to your finest thought, the invention of laws by your soul, and many other things that it draws miraculously from your own self, which did not suspect that it possessed them. This work proceeds from the most intimate center of your existence, and yet it is distinct from yourself.
Eupalinos ou l'architecte (1921)
Nay, who knows, Phaedrus, if the efforts of humans in their search for God, the observances, the prayers they essay, their obstinate will to discover the most efficacious… who knows if mortals will not finally discover a certitude—or an incertitude—stable and in exact conformity with their nature, if not with the very nature of God?
Eupalinos ou l'architecte (1921)