The characteristic of the hour is that the commonplace mind, knowing itself to be commonplace, has the assurance to proclaim the rights of the commonplace and to impose them wherever it will. Towns are full of people, houses full of tenants, hotels full of guests, trains full of travelers, caf s full of customers, parks full of promenaders, consulting-rooms of famous doctors full of patients, theatres full of spectators, and beaches full of bathers. What previously was, in general, no problem, now begins to be an everyday one, namely, to find room. The cynic, a parasite of civilisation, lives by denying it, for the very reason that he is convinced that it will not fail. By speaking, by thinking, we undertake to clarify things, and that forces us to exacerbate them, dislocate them, schematize them.
Every concept is in itself an exaggeration.
Effort is only effort when it begins to hurt. The good is, like nature, an immense landscape in which man advances through centuries of exploration. To rule is not so much a question of the heavy hand as the firm seat. Hatred is a feeling which leads to the extinction of values. We have need of history in its entirety, not to fall back into it, but to see if we can escape from it.