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There is an art to finding your way in the lower regions by the memory of what you have seen when you were higher up. When you can no longer see, you can at least still know. . .

— René Daumal Mount Analogue (1952)

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Art

More quotes by René Daumal

Art has a double face, of expression and illusion, just like science has a double face: the reality of error and the phantom of truth.

The Lie of the Truth (1938)

Each time dawn appears, the mystery is there in its entirety.

Words are made for a certain exactness of thought, as tears are for a certain degree of pain. What is least distinct cannot be named; what is clearest is unutterable.

A Night of Serious Drinking (1938)

You cannot always stay on the summits. You have to come down again . . .

Mount Analogue (1952)

These are no doubt more methodical and complete, but are intelligible only after a little preliminary experience. The entire aim of these notes is to help the beginner acquire this preliminary experience a little faster.

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All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom.

Albert Einstein Moral Decay (1937)

The great artists are the ones who dare to entitle to beauty things so natural that when they're seen afterward, people say: Why did I never realize before that this too was beautiful?

André Gide The Immoralist (1902)

A genuine work of art must mean many things; the truer its art, the more things it will mean.

George MacDonald The Fantastic Imagination (1893)

Were art to redeem man, it could do so only by saving him from the seriousness of life and restoring him to an unexpected boyishness.

José Ortega y Gasset The Dehumanization of Art and Ideas about the Novel (1925)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: René Daumal (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.