"What are mortals for?—Their business is to know. Know? And what is to know?—It is assuredly: not to be what one is.—And so here are humans raving and thinking, introducing into nature the principle of unlimited error, and myriads of marvels!"

“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.”

“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?”

“The very object of art, the principle of its artifice, is precisely to impart the impression of an ideal state in which the man who reaches it will be capable of spontaneously producing, with no effort or hesitation, a magnificent and wonderfully ordered expression of his nature and our destinies.”

“God created man, and finding him not sufficiently alone, gave him a female companion so that he might feel his solitude more acutely.”

“We civilizations now know ourselves mortal.”

“God made everything out of nothing. But the nothingness shows through.”