"YOU WRITE to me, my dear sir, requesting advice at one of the most momentous epochs in a young man’s life."

"The design in most men is one of conformity; here and there, in picked natures, it transcends itself and soars on the other side..."

"Le temps est de toutes les propriétés celle qu’il faut le plus garantir contre l’invasion."

"Under the pressure of interhuman competition, all that is good and useful, ... has been completely set aside."

"The aim of the wise man was no longer the plaudits of the masses but autarkeia, or self-sufficiency."

"Altogether, it was rather like being in a somewhat spartan study centre - or perhaps even more like being in a monastery."

In a manner of speaking, boredom is your window on time. Once this window opens, don't try to shut it; on the contrary, throw it wide open.

"There is nothing in which people differ more than in their powers of observation."

"Falls and cascades are a great feature all through this country, as they are a marked feature in Wordsworth's poetry."

"It must always be remembered that the isolation of the self, in a deliberately lonely life, need not imply living in actual solitude."

[Ancien élève de l'École normale supérieure, Bernard Sève a été longtemps professeur en khâgne à Lyon et à Paris. Il est aujourd'hui...

"It is a mistake to regard his scepticism as merely negative. Like all wise scepticism it is creative and constructive."

"Parmi les localités qui jouent un rôle dans la légende du Saint Graal, certains attachent une importance toute spéciale à Glastonbury."

"Hamlet's knowledge and his desire for knowledge set him apart from the world. In it, he cannot be of it. He acts the part of a madman."

"Where can one be, what can one do, to find a little safe shelter in this world, and a little peace of mind ?"

"In all the arts whose raw material is of a temporal nature, the primary aim of the artist is to spatialize time."

"Let us freely and wholeheartedly yield to inner impulse, ranging in thought over every part of beauty's realm."

"NATURE ! We are encompassed and embraced by her — powerless to withdraw, yet powerless to enter more deeply into her being."

"I never had any other desire so strong .. that I might be master at last of a small house and large garden,"

"I am glad that you approve and applaud my design of withdrawing myself from all tumult and business of the world..."

"... solitude can be well fitted and set right but upon a very few persons."

"Calmness is the rarest quality in human life. It is the poise of a great nature, in harmony with itself and its ideals."

Le cinéma, la radio, la danse, tous ces nouveaux moyens de mécanisation de l’humanité, exercent un pouvoir énorme qui ne peut être dépassé.

" I fear we are most of us like Mrs. Poyser's bantam cock, who fancied the sun got up every morning to hear him crow."