A Work Should Convey Its Entire Meaning

Let But A Single Flash Of Reality -- The Glimpse Of A Woman From Afar Or From Behind -- Enable Us To Project The Image Of Beauty Before Our Eyes, And We Imagine That We Have Recognised It, Our Hearts Beat, And We Will Always Remain Half-persuaded That It Was She, Provided That The Woman Has Vanished: It Is Only If We Manage To Overtake Her That We Realise Our Mistake.

When From A Long Distant Past Nothing Subsists After The Things Are Broken And Scattered, The Smell And Taste Of Things Remain.

When A Belief Vanishes, There Survives It -- More And More Vigorously So As To Cloak The Absence Of The Power, Now Lost To Us, Of Imparting Reality To New Things -- A Fetishistic Attachment To The Old Things Which It Did Once Animate, As If It Was In Them And Not In Ourselves That The Divine Spark Resided, And As If Our Present Incredulity Had A Contingent Cause -- The Death Of The Gods.

A Work Should Convey Its Entire Meaning By Itself, Imposing It On The Spectator Even Before He Knows What The Subject Is.

The Opinions Which We Hold Of One Another, Our Relations With Friends And Kinsfolk Are In No Sense Permanent, Save In Appearance, But Are As Eternally Fluid As The Sea Itself.