Man cannot endure his own littleness unless he can translate it into meaningfulness on the largest possible level.

For man, maximum excitement is the confrontation of death and the skillful defiance of it by watching others fed to it as he survives transfixed with rapture.

Man's natural and inevitable urge to deny mortality and achieve a heroic self-image are the root causes of human evil.

Man is literally split in two: he has an awareness of his own splendid uniqueness in that he sticks out of nature with a towering majesty, and yet he goes back into the ground a few feet in order blindly and dumbly to rot and disappear forever.

Love is the problem of an animal who must find life, create a dialogue with nature in order to experience his own being.

Better guilt than the terrible burden of freedom and responsibility.

To live fully is to live with an awareness of the rumble of terror that underlies everything.