René Daumal

“You cannot stay on the summit forever; you have to come down again. So why bother in the first place? Just this: What is above knows what is below, but what is below does not know what is above.”

“One climbs, one sees. One descends, one sees no longer, but one has seen. There is an art of conducting oneself in the lower regions by the memory of what one saw higher up.”

“To be aware of a single shortcoming in oneself is more useful than to be aware of a thousand in someone else.”

“The door to the invisible must be visible.”

“I am dead because I have no desire. I have no desire because I think I possess. I think I possess because I do not try to give. In trying to give, you see that you have nothing.”

“Without the spiritual world the material world is a heartbreaking contradiction.”

“An art of being in the world, and of being in oneself, the art of living, is the ultimate end of all other arts.”

“One must always be ready to change sides with the truth.”

“Poetry is a hook to catch the sublime.”

“What is a miracle? It is something that is not in the normal order of things. But I have never seen the normal order of things.”

“The path is made by walking on it.”