“The dictionary is based on the hypothesis — obviously an unproven one — that languages are made up of equivalent synonyms.”

He was very religious; he believed that he had a secret pact with God which exempted him from doing good in exchange for prayers and piety.

When I write, I do it urged by an intimate necessity. I don’t have in mind an exclusive public, or a public of multitudes, I don’t think in either thing. I think about expressing what I want to say. I try to do it in the simplest way possible.

There is nothing in the world that is not mysterious, but the mystery is more evident in certain things than in others: in the sea, in the eyes of the elders, in the color yellow, and in music.

Democracy is an abuse of statistics.

We accept reality so readily – perhaps because we sense that nothing is real.

Truth never penetrates an unwilling mind.

The worst labyrinth is not that intricate form that can entrap us forever, but a single and precise straight line.

What will die with me when I die, what pathetic or fragile form will the world lose?

There’s no need to build a labyrinth when the entire universe is one.

Personally, I am a hedonistic reader; I have never read a book merely because it was ancient. I read books for the aesthetic emotions they offer me, and I ignore the commentaries and criticism.

In general, every country has the language it deserves.

I think most people are more important than their opinions.

The possibilities of the art of combination are not infinite, but they tend to be frightful.

We have stopped believing in progress. What progress that is !

The future is as irrevocable as an inflexible yesterday.

I would rather like to think of God as being a kind of adventurer – even as Wells thought about him – or perhaps as something within us making for some unknown purpose.

Human language appears to be a unique phenomenon, without significant analogue in the animal world.

If you think of music as a universal language, it still has some very powerful dialects.

To speak another language is to have another soul

If you say, I love you, then you have already fallen in love with language, which is already a form of break up and infidelity.

Speech happens to not be his language.

Language is a process of free creation; its laws and principles are fixed, but the manner in which the principles of generation are used is free and infinitely varied.

All speech, written or spoken, is a dead language, until it finds a willing and prepared hearer.

What I feel for you is at once the expression of language and the absence of it.