We live at a time when man believes himself fabulously capable of creation, but he does not know what to create.

Revolution is not the uprising against preexisting order, but the setting up of a new order contradictory to the traditional one

The struggle with the past is not a hand-to-hand fight. The future overcomes it by swallowing it. If it leaves anything outside it is lost.

Thought is not a gift to man but a laborious, precarious and volatile acquisition.

With morality we correct the mistakes of our instincts, and with love we correct the mistakes of our morals.

Triumph cannot help being cruel.

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.