The difficulties which I meet with in order to realize my existence are precisely what awaken and mobilize my activities, my capacities.

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

Liberalism -- it is well to recall this today -- is the supreme form of generosity; it is the right which the majority concedes to minorities and hence it is the noblest cry that has ever resounded in this planet. It announces the determination to share existence with the enemy; more than that, with an enemy which is weak.

The metaphor is probably the most fertile power possessed by man

In their choice of lovers both the male and the female reveal their essential nature. The type of human being we prefer reveals the contours of our heart. Love is an impulse which springs from the most profound depths of our beings, and upon reaching the visible surface of life carries with it an alluvium of shells and seaweed from the inner abyss. A skilled naturalist, by filing these materials, can reconstruct the oceanic depths from which they have been uprooted.

We cannot put off living until we are ready.

The past will not tell us what we ought to do, but... what we ought to avoid.