Legitimacy, when challenged, bases itself on an appeal to the past, while justification relates to an end that lies in the future. Violence can be justifiable, but it never will be legitimate.

... we may remember what the Romansthought a cultivated person ought to be: one who knows how to choose his company among men, among things, among thoughts, in the present as well as in the past.

Poetry, whose material is language, is perhaps the most human and least worldly of the arts, the one in which the end product remains closest to the thought that inspired it.

where everybody is guilty, nobody is.

The conflict between art and politics... cannot and must not be solved.

The practice of violence, like all action, changes the world, but the most probable change is a more violent world.

Conscience is the anticipation of the fellow who awaits you if and when you come home.