“Through imagination, thanks to the subtleties of the irreality function, we re-enter the world of confidence, the world of the confident being, which is the proper world for reverie.”

The characteristic of scientific progress is our knowing that we did not know.

Our whole childhood remains to be reimagined. In reimagining it, we have the possibility of recovering it in the very life of our reveries as a solitary child.

To verify images kills them, and it is always more enriching to imagine than to experience.

The reveries of two solitary souls prepare the sweetness of loving.

Cosmic reveries separate us from project reveries. They situate us in a world and not in a society. The cosmic reverie possesses a sort of stability or tranquility. It helps us escape time. It is a state.

We comfort ourselves by reliving memories of protection.

The night dreamer cannot articulate a cogito. The night dream is a dream without a dreamer.

One must live to build one’s house, and not build one’s house to live in.

The blank page gives us the right to dream.

To disappear into deep water or to disappear toward a far horizon, to become part of depth of infinity, such is the destiny of man that finds its image in the destiny of water.

Why should the actions of the imagination not be as real as those of perception?

Any comparison diminishes the expressive qualities of the terms of the comparison.

We are never real historians, but always near poets, and our emotion is perhaps nothing but an expression of a poetry that was lost.

If we did not have a feminine being within us, how would we rest ourselves?

The subconscious is ceaselessly murmuring, and it is by listening to these murmurs that one hears its truth.

The cleverer I am at miniaturizing the world, the better I possess it.

To see the best before I have properly begun would be somewhat premature.

Romanticism has never been properly judged. Who was there to judge it? The critics!

Life may as properly be called an art as any other.

Sir, Respect Your Dinner: idolize it, enjoy it properly. You will be many hours in the week, many weeks in the year, and many years in your life happier if you do.

Every object strives for its proper place. A book seeks to be near its truest admirer. Just as this helpless moth seeks to be near the candle that infatuates him.

For my part, I wish all guns with their belongings and everything could be sent to hell, which is the proper place for their exhibition and use.

Ignorance, when it is voluntary, is criminal; and he may be properly charged with evil who refused to learn how he might prevent it.

You’re always in a rush, or else you’re too exhausted to have a proper conversation. Soon enough, the long hours, the traveling, the broken sleep have all crept into your being and become part of you, so everyone can see it, in your posture, your gaze, the way you move and talk.