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

The cynic, a parasite of civilization, lives by denying it, for the very reason that he is convinced that it will not fail.

He who wishes to teach us a truth should not tell it to us, but simply suggest it with a brief gesture, a gesture which starts an ideal trajectory in the air along which we glide until we find ourselves at the feet of the new truth.

Our firmest convictions are apt to be the most suspect; they mark our limitations and our bounds. Life is a petty thing unless it is moved by the indomitable urge to extend its boundaries.

The will to be oneself is heroism

This leads us to note down in our psychological chart of the mass-man of today two fundamental traits: the free expansion of his vital desires, and, therefore, of his personality; and his radical ingratitude towards all that has made possible the ease of his existence. These traits together make up the well-known psychology of the spoilt child.

The poet begins where the man ends. The man's lot is to live his human life, the poet's to invent what is nonexistent.