“Life is a series of collisions with the future; it is not the sum of what we have been, but what we yearn to be.”

“Every life is, more or less, a ruin among whose debris we have to discover what the person ought to have been.”

“Living is a constant process of deciding what we are going to do. ”

“We feel that we actual men have suddenly been left alone on the earth; that the dead did not die in appearance only but effectively; that they can no longer help us. Any remains of the traditional spirit have evaporated. Models, norms, standards are no use to us. We have to solve our problems without any active collaboration of the past, in full actuality, be they problems of art, science, or politics. (...) It is not easy to formulate the impression that our epoch has of itself; it believes itself more than all the rest, and at the same time feels that it is a beginning. What expression shall we find for it? Perhaps this one: superior to other times, inferior to itself. Strong, indeed, and at the same time uncertain of its destiny; proud of its strength and at the same time fearing it.”

“In their choice of lovers both the male and the female reveal their essential nature. The type of human being we prefer reveals the contours of our heart. Love is an impulse which springs from the most profound depths of our beings, and upon reaching the visible surface of life carries with it an alluvium of shells and seaweed from the inner abyss. A skilled naturalist, by filing these materials, can reconstruct the oceanic depths from which they have been uprooted.”

“The poet begins where the man ends.The man's lot is to live his human life,the poet's to invent what is nonexistent.”

“We do not live to think, but, on the contrary, we think in order that we may succeed in surviving.”