Each time dawn appears, the mystery is there in its entirety.
—Rene Daumal
Art has a double face, of expression and illusion, just like science has a double face: the reality of error and the phantom of truth.
—Rene Daumal
Topics: Science, Scientists
It is still not enough for language to have clarity and content… it must also have a goal and an imperative. Otherwise from language we descend to chatter, from chatter to babble and from babble to confusion.
—Rene Daumal
Topics: Language
Truth is one, but error proliferates. Man tracks it down and cuts it up into little pieces hoping to turn it into grains of truth. But the ultimate atom will always essentially be an error, a miscalculation.
—Rene Daumal
Topics: Mistakes
Words are made for a certain exactness of thought, as tears are for a certain degree of pain. What is least distinct cannot be named; what is clearest is unutterable.
—Rene Daumal
Topics: Words
Man is head, chest and stomach. Each of these animals operates, more often than not, individually. I eat, I feel, I even, although rarely, think. This jungle crawls and teems, is hungry, roars, gets angry, devours itself, and its cacophonic concert does not even stop when you are asleep.
—Rene Daumal
Topics: Humankind, Humanity
Common experience is the gold reserve which confers an exchange value on the currency which words are; without this reserve of shared experiences, all our pronouncements are checks drawn on insufficient funds.
—Rene Daumal
Topics: Experience
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