"The truly great writers are those who have a feel for the subterranean. .. The great novelists are the true psychologists."

"We have reached a point in history where man has become his own most dangerous enemy."

"Je délaissai mes obligations et jour après jour je ne pensai qu’à gagner du temps, pour pouvoir me consacrer aux livres une fois chez moi."

"There was once a wild goose. In the autumn, about the time for migration, it became aware of some tame geese."

"Celui qui part à la recherche de lui-même, semblable — nous l’avons vu — à un pèlerin, se voue à une marche incessante."

"Toute ma vie je m’enfuirai vers un monde où les hommes ont l’illusion d’être, pour qu’un autre monde m’étreigne plus fort..."

"La recherche de la connaissance de soi se présente comme une démarche à accomplir. Elle transforme l’homme en pèlerin."

"This pre-established harmony between the theory of Schopenhauer and my own natural man causes me pleasure mingled with terror."

"Nietzsche, therefore, never set up house with knowledge so as to economise and preserve; he built no spiritual home over his head."

"En prose comme en vers, c'est un pessimiste de nature, plus que de raisonnement. Sa sensibilité parle, plutôt que son intelligence."

"In the woods too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of life, is always a child."

"A void surrounded him, an awe-inspiring silence; no hermit or anchorite in the desert was ever more abandoned."

"Maïa ! Is she indeed the true goddess ? Hindoo wisdom long ago regarded the world as the dream of Brahma."

"S. Augustine. : You are the victim of a terrible plague of the soul — melancholy ; which the moderns call accidie..."

"Civilization, our drug, has so poisoned us that our dependence on it is an addiction, a mixture of ecstasy and curse."

"Selon une tradition antique remontant à Aristoxène de Tarente, un visiteur indien aurait fréquenté à Athènes le futur maître de Platon."

« Je m'appelle Diogène ; si tu veux, nous vivrons ensemble : tu seras le maître et moi le disciple. »

"There is, no doubt, a perfect analogy between the life of the human and that of the vegetable, both of the body and the mind."

"In fact, for solid happiness and peace, there are none more favored than those blessed with a master-passion and a monopolizing work."

"Who am I ? How did I get into the world ? Why was I not asked about it ?"

"The same book in the hand, the same pen between the fingers, the same conversation on the lips, and the same automobile instead of feet."

["Nourrir le corps, Nourrir l'esprit" / "Eloge de la lenteur" / "Philosophie, science et vie chez Giordano Bruno"]

"Only transcendence can make this questionable life good, the world beautiful, and existence itself a fulfilment."

"Living thus, year in and year out, .. remote from the nature that is outside them, and no less remote from the nature that is within."