God made everything out of nothing, but the nothingness shows through.
I thought it necessary to study history, even to study it deeply, in order to obtain a clear meaning of our immediate time.
Conscience reigns but it does not govern.
Man is only man at the surface. Remove the skin, dissect, and immediately you come to machinery.
A limited vocabulary, but one with which you can make numerous combinations, is better than thirty thousand words that only hamper the action of the mind.
Science is feasible when the variables are few and can be enumerated; when their combinations are distinct and clear. We are tending toward the condition of science and aspiring to do it. The artist works out his own formulas; the interest of science lies in the art of making science.
No work of art is ever completed, it is only abandoned.
What golden hour of life, what glittering moment will ever equal the pain its loss can cause?
The world acquires value only through its extremes and endures only through moderation; extremists make the world great, the moderates give it stability.
There is a difference if we see something with a pencil in our hand or without one.
The mind has transformed the world, and the world is repaying it with interest. It has led man where he had no idea how to go.
Thought must be hidden in the verse like nutritional virtue in a fruit.
The “determinist” swears that if we knew everything we should also be able to deduce and foretell the conduct of every man in every circumstance, and that is obvious enough. But the expression “know everything” means nothing.
The dog has made man their God, if the dog was an atheist, it would be perfect.
History justifies whatever we want it to. It teaches absolutely nothing, for it contains everything and gives examples of everything.
If disorder is the rule with you, you will be penalized for installing order.
Great things are accomplished by those who do not feel the impotence of man. This is a precious gift.
Thanks to photography, the eye grew accustomed to anticipate what it should see and to see it; and it learned not to see nonexistent things which, hitherto, it had seen so clearly.
In poetry everything which must be said is almost impossible to say well.
If the state is strong, it crushes us. If it is weak, we perish.