Life has no meaning the moment you lose the illusion of being eternal.

[Contemporary writer] could be a kind of [Samuel] Beckett who would not be felt to be totally committed to despair.

One could only damage oneself through the harm one did to others. One could never get directly at oneself.

What I see is teeming cohesion, contained dispersal... For him, to sculpt is to take the fat off space.

Words are loaded pistols.

In wanting freedom we discover that it depends entirely on the freedom of others, and that the freedom of others depends on ours. . . I am obliged to want others to have freedom at the same time that I want my own freedom. I can take freedom as my goal only if I take that of others as a goal as well.

Ideas come in pairs and they contradict one another; their opposition is the principal engine of reflection.