29 Quotes by René Daumal

Everyone pretended to understand so as not to interrupt.

Having no lead to follow, we were swept up by words, memories, manias, grudges, and solidarities. Having no goal to aim for, we wasted what little life there was in our thoughts on joining in with a pun, speaking ill of common acquaintances, avoiding unpleasant facts, riding hobbyhorses, pushing at open doors, making faces, and preening ourselves.

To return to the source of things, one has to travel in the opposite direction.

What did we possess of real value? ...For no one saw anything around him or in him which really belonged to him. It reached the point where we were just eight beggars, possessing nothing...

I succeeded by following the same method, which consists in regarding the problem as solved and deducing from the solution all logical consequences.

Each time dawn appears, the mystery is there in its entirety.

It is still not enough for language to have clarity and content... it must also have a goal and an imperative. Otherwise from language we descend to chatter, from chatter to babble and from babble to confusion.

Common experience is the gold reserve which confers an exchange value on the currency which words are; without this reserve of shared experiences, all our pronouncements are checks drawn on insufficient funds.

Art has a double face, of expression and illusion, just like science has a double face: the reality of error and the phantom of truth.