"...through reading, the modern man succeeds in obtaining an "escape from time" comparable to the "emegence from time" effected by myths. (...) Readi… - Mircea Eliade

To believe that I could, at twenty-three, sacrifice history and culture for "the Absolute" was further proof that I had not understood India. My vocation was culture, not sainthood.

"It is above all the valorizing of the present that requires emphasizing. The simple fact of existing, of living in time, can comprise a religious dimension. This dimension is not always obvious, since sacrality is in a sense camouflaged in the immediate, in the "natural" and the everyday. The joy of life discovered by the Greeks is not a profane type of enjoyment: it reveals the bliss of existing, of sharing — even fugitively — in the spontaneity of life and the majesty of the world. Like so many others before and after them, the Greeks learned that the surest way to escape from time is to exploit the wealth, at first sight impossible to suspect, of the lived instant."

"Spun oamenii ca au cautat viata intreaga "femeia ideala", si n-au gasit-o. Absurd. O puteau gasi in orice femeie, dar pentru aceasta le trebuia iubirea aceea adevarata, care sa rupa cercul insului lor, sa infranga instinctul de conservare care ii zidea in fata dragostei, sa anuleze acel abstract dor de "femeia ideala", creat numai pentru confortul lor, pentru odihna lor melancolica si amuzanta; caci e foarte confortabil sa "cauti" vesnic, mai greu e sa gasesti si sa nutresti ca un perfect amant ghimpele acela de iubire."