I don't know whether this world has a meaning that transcends it. But I know that I cannot know that meaning and that it is impossible for me just now to know it. What can a meaning outside my condition mean to me? I can understand only in human terms. What I touch, what resists me - that I understand. And these two certainties - my appetite for the absolute and for unity and the impossibility of reducing this world to a rational and reasonable principle - I also know that I cannot reconcile them. What other truth can I admit without lying, without bringing in a hope I lack and which means nothing within the limits of my conditions?

Everything considered, a determined soul will always manage.

Knowing whether or not one can live without appeal is all that interests me.

I do not want to found anything on the incomprehensible. I want to know whether I can live with what I know and with that alone.

I do not want to found anything on the incomprehensible. I want to know whether I can live with what I know and with that alone.

'There are a few of us -madmen all! -who are in love with knowing, who would sell the last shirt from our backs for one small truth, one tiny star-fire to ligh…

You will learn nothing of importance from this story except, perhaps, how to die; but then, you were born knowing that and in any case it only has to be done o…