Wisdom

Life is not a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be lived.

The Other forcibly reveals to me the world in which my security is rooted.

The face commands without ordering.

To approach the Other in conversation is to welcome his expression, in which at each instant he overflows the idea a thought would carry away from it. It is therefore to receive from the Other beyond the capacity of the I, which means exactly: to have the idea of infinity.

Let us respect the cat. When it comes to feelings, they are unteachable.

He who believes only that which he can fully comprehend, ceases to believe at all.

Faith which does not doubt is dead faith.

To be surprised, to wonder, is to begin to understand.

Tell me what you pay attention to and I will tell you who you are.

Laughter is the corrective force which prevents us from becoming cranks.

The present contains nothing more than the past, and what is found in the effect was already in the cause.

The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.

Every new born child teaches us that man was not created!

The entire visible world is but their thickened skin.

To deepen our comprehension of the existing world is an act of the freest choice and most evident self-activity.

You determine the quality of your content, never its quantity.

We should not so much look at what a man has said, as at what he has done.

The criterion and rule of the true is to have made it. Accordingly, our clear and distinct idea of the mind cannot be a criterion of the mind itself, still less of other truths. For while the mind perceives itself, it does not make itself.

The nature of nations is to form and grow by means of metaphors.

The will needs no tutor to teach us to will, but all other things have need of it.