Clarissa

“In life man commits himself and draws his own portrait, outside of which there is nothing. No doubt this thought may seem harsh to someone who has not made a success of his life. But on the other hand, it helps people to understand that reality alone counts, and that dreams, expectations and hopes only serve to define a man as a broken dream, aborted hopes, and futile expectations.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism is a Humanism

“A religious symbol conveys its message even if it is no longer consciously understood in every part. For a symbol speaks to the whole human being and not only to the intelligence.”
― Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion

“La rencontre avec mes premiers vrais défauts me donnait une assurance que je n'avais jamais eue. Ils mettaient en valeur mes qualités que je découvrais aussi et qui m'intéressaient moins. Mes qualités ne me faisaient progresser que lorsque mes défauts les excitaient. ... Je ressentais profondément qu'en les connaissant ils devenaient des outils utiles à ma construction. Il ne s'agissait plus de les repousser, ou de les supprimer, encore moins d'en avoir honte, mais de les maîtriser et de m'en servir, le cas échéant. Mes défauts étaient des qualités, en quelque sorte.”
― Marie Cardinal, The Words to Say It

“Do what he will, he [the profane man] is an inheritor. He cannot utterly abolish his past, since he himself is a product of his past. He forms himself by a series of denials and refusals, but he continues to be haunted by the realities that he has refused and denied. To acquire a world of his own, he has desacralized the world in which his ancestors lived; but to do so he has been obliged to adopt an earlier type of behavior, and that behavior is still emotionally present in him, in one form or another, ready to be reactualized in his deepest being. ”
― Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion