The metaphor is probably the most fertile power possessed by man

This is the gravest danger that today threatens civilization: State intervention; the absorption of all spontaneous social effort by the State, that is to say, of spontaneous historical action, which in the long run sustains, nourishes, and impels human destinies.

To wonder is to begin to understand.

Imagine for a moment that each one of us takes only a little more care for each hour of his days, that he demands in it a little more of elegance and intensity; then, multiplying all these minute pressures toward the perfecting and deepening of each life by all the others, calculate for yourselves the gigantic enrichment, the fabulous ennobling which this process would create for human society.

We cannot put off living until we are ready. The most salient characteristic of life is its urgency, 'here and now' without any possible postponement. Life is fired at us point-blank.

To be surprised, to wonder, is to begin to understand. This is the sport, the luxury, special to the intellectual man.

The hunter is the alert man. But this itself-life as complete alertness-is the attitude in which the animal exists in the jungle.