"I go to the Chinese corner of my library — a peaceful, happy corner! What wisdom there is in these ancient books and how amazingly timely it can be !"

"Enchanted woods are rare. But I suspect that where they exist, and seem — so deep is their magic — to march nowhere on reality, they are most often within a stone's-throw of the dear homes of every day ; nor is it needful to travel very far afield in order to find them."

"The spectacle was born from the world's loss of unity, and the immense expansion of the modern spectacle reveals the enormity of this loss."

"Give us spare time, Holy Jerome, and joyful energy to use it."

"I should prefer to be miserable, ill, and feared, and live in some out of the way corner, than to be "settled” and given my place in modern mediocrity!"

"In short, I can say all I think, and what I want to do is to test once and for all to what extent modern mankind — so proud of its freedom of thought — can endure free thought."

"Ainsi, continuons simplement à dériver ! Nous finirons certainement, mon cher et courageux ami, par devenir deux bons nageurs."

"Midway through his life, Dante, on the eve of Good Friday, 1300, discovers that he has strayed from the True Way of the religious life, and has wandered into the Dark Wood of Error, where he must spend a miserable night."

"If we look deeply into the essence of things, into the horror of existence, Nietzsche thinks we will be overwhelmed — paralyzed. Like Hamlet we will not be able to act, because we see that action can "not change anything in the eternal nature of things."

"Yalom describes four primary issues of existence (or "ultimate concerns") — death, freedom, isolation, and meaninglessness."

"Quand c'est le monde qui vient à nous et non l'inverse, nous ne sommes plus « au monde », nous nous comportons comme les habitants d'un pays de cocagne qui consomment leur monde."

"An artist is by temperament a person who sees things as they are in themselves, not in those rough convenient categories which serve for the business of life."

"The figure of Christ, to us an entirely symbolical figure, is the interpretation of that old Osiris myth of Egypt."

"The human characteristic is consciousness; the characteristic of consciousness is a process of perpetual exhaustion, of detachment without rest or exclusion from everything that comes before it."

"The average man, says Shaw, can advance not a single reason for thinking that the earth is round."

"At this moment I do not believe in anything and I have no hope."

"As for the great problems, we have no advantage over our ancestors or our more recent predecessors: men have always known everything, at least in what concerns the Essential."

"Le rôle des périodes de déclin est de mettre une civilisation à nu, de la démasquer, de la dépouiller de ses prestiges et de l’arrogance liée à ses accomplissements."

"THE SO-CALLED science of psychology is now in chaos, with no sign that order is soon to be restored. "

"I believe that this feeling for the hearth, for the immemorial lares and penates, is infinitely stronger in Baltimore than in New York — that it has better survived there, indeed, than in any other large city of America."

"Those who are practising ‘stopping’ should retire to some quiet place and there, sitting erect, earnestly seek tranquilize and concentrate the mind."

"The psychic life-force, the libido, symbolizes itself in the sun or personifies itself in figures of heroes with solar attributes."

"Myth is certainly not an infantile phantasm, but one of the most important requisites of primitive life."

"The return to the simple life can be regarded as an unhoped-for piece of good fortune even though it demands considerable self-sacrifice and is not undertaken voluntarily."