“Since poetry deals with the singular, not the general, it cannot - if it is good poetry - look at things of this earth other than as colorful, variegated, and exciting, and so, it cannot reduce life, with all its pain, horror, suffering, and ecstasy, to a unified tonality of boredom and complaint. By necessity poetry is therefore on the side of being and against nothingness.”

“She got out at Raspail. I was left behind with the immensity of existing things. A sponge, suffering because it cannot saturate itself; a river, suffering because reflections of clouds and trees are not clouds and trees.”

“Religion used to be the opium of the people. To those suffering humiliation, pain, illness, and serfdom, religion promised the reward of an after life. But now, we are witnessing a transformation, a true opium of the people is the belief in nothingness after death, the huge solace, the huge comfort of thinking that for our betrayals, our greed, our cowardice, our murders, we are not going to be judged.”

“The voice of passion is better than the voice of reason. The passionless cannot change history.”

“He sang the brightness of mornings and green rivers,He sang of smoking water in the rose-colored daybreaks,Of colors: cinnabar, carmine, burnt sienna, blue,Of the delight of swimming in the sea under marble cliffs,Of feasting on a terrace above the tumult of a fishing port,Of tastes of wine, olive oil, almonds, mustard, salt.Of the flight of the swallow, the falcon,Of a dignified flock of pelicans above the bay,Of the scent of an armful of lilacs in summer rain,Of his having composed his words always against deathAnd of having made no rhyme in praise of nothingness.”

“1. That reason is a gift of God and that we should believe in its ability to comprehend the world.2. That they have been wrong who undermined confidence in reason by enumerating the forces that want to usurp it: class struggle, libido, will to power.3. That we should be aware that our being is enclosed within the circle of its perceptions, but not reduce reality to dreams and the phantoms of the mind.4. That truth is a proof of freedom and that the sign of slavery is the lie.5. That the proper attitude toward being is respect and that we must, therefore, avoid the company of people who debase being with their sarcasm, and praise nothingness.6. That, even if we are accused of arrogance, it is the case that in the life of the mind a strict hierarchy is necessary.7. That intellectuals in the twentieth century were afflicted with the habit of baratin, i.e., irresponsible jabber.8. That in the hierarchy of human activities the arts stand higher than philosophy, and yet bad philosophy can spoil art.9. That the objective truth exists; namely, out of two contrary assertions, one is true, one false, except in strictly defined cases when maintaining contradiction is legitimate.10. That quite independently of the fate of religious denominations we should preserve a "philosophical faith," i.e., a belief in transcendence as a measure of humanity.11. That time excludes and sentences to oblivion only those works of our hands and minds which prove worthless in raising up, century after century, the huge edifice of civilization.12. That in our lives we should not succumb to despair because of our errors and our sins, for the past is never closed down and receives the meaning we give it by our subsequent acts.”

“When, as my friend suggested, I stand before Zeus (whether I die naturally, or under sentence of History)I will repeat all this that I have written as my defense.Many people spend their entire lives collecting stamps or old coins, or growing tulips. I am sure that Zius will be merciful toward people who have given themselves entirely to these hobbies, even though they are only amusing and pointless diversions. I shall say to him : "It is not my fault that you made me a poet, and that you gave me the gift of seeing simultaneously what was happening in Omaha and Prague, in the Baltic states and on the shores of the Arctic Ocean.I felt that if I did not use that gift my poetry would be tasteless to me and fame detestable. Forgive me." And perhaps Zeus, who does not call stamp-collectors and tulip-growers silly, will forgive.”