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Pradelle was a good listener; he had a meditative air and would reply in a grave voice: what a find! I hastened to lay bare my soul to him. I made an aggressive attack upon the Barbarians, and he surprised me by refusing to agree with me; he had lost his father, and got on perfectly well with his m…

I had spent the year moaning over the vanity of human aims: but I had pursued my own with tenacious zeal. I passed in general Philosophy. Simone Weil headed the list followed by me, and then by a student from the Normale called Jean Pradelle. I also passed my certificate in Greek. Mademoiselle Lamb…

I began to have ambitions again. Despite my friendships and my uncertain love-affair, I still felt very much alone; there was no one who knew me or loved me completely, for myself alone; no one was, nor, I thought could anyone ever be ‘someone definite and complete’ to me. Rather than go on sufferi…

It was a great relief to me not to see Jacques any more; I was no longer torturing myself over him. The first rays of spring sunshine were taking the nip of winter out of my blood. While I continued to work hard, I decided that I would have a little amusement. I went fairly often to the cinema in t…

[...] At the Sorbonne, my professors systematically ignored Hegel and Marx; in a big book on the progress of conscience in the western world, Brunschvig had devoted a bare three pages to Marx, whom he placed on the same level as one of the obscurest reactionary thinkers. He was teaching us about th…