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

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

“For there is no doubt that the most radical division that it is possible to make of humanity is that which splits it into two classes of creatures: those who make great demands on themselves, piling up difficulties and duties; and those who demand nothing special of themselves, but for whom to live is to be every moment what they already are, without imposing on themselves any effort towards perfection; mere buoys that float on the waves.”

“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.”