“But sometimes illumination comes to our rescue at the very moment when all seems lost; we have knocked at every door and they open on nothing until, at last, we stumble unconsciously against the only one through which we can enter the kingdom we have sought in vain a hundred years—and it opens.”
“Just when everything seems lost; one has knocked on all doors which lead nowhere, and then, unwittingly, one pushes against the only one through which one would have searched in vain for a hundred years—and it opens.”
“The only true voyage of discovery, the only fountain of eternal youth, would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes, to behold the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others, to behold the hundred universes that each of them beholds, that each of them is; and this we can contrive with an Elstir, with a Vinteuil; with men like these we do really fly from star to star.”
“The only true voyage of discovery, the only fountain of eternal youth, would be not to visit strange lands but to possess new eyes; to behold the universe through the eyes of another—of a hundred others—to behold the hundred universes that each of them beholds, that each of them is.”
“Unlike the earth, the sea is not separated from the sky; it radiates under the sun and seems to die with it every evening. And when the sun has vanished, the sea keeps longing for it, keeps preserving a bit of its luminous reminiscence in the face of the uniformly somber earth.”
