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.

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

A fascinating mystery of nature is manifested in the universal fact of hunting: the inexorable hierarchy among living beings. Every animal is in a relationship of superiority or inferiority with regard to every other. Strict equality is exceedingly improbable and anomalous.

Life is fired at us point blank.

Love is exclusivity, selection.

Beliefs constitute the basic stratum, that which lies deepest, in the architecture of our life. By them we live, and by the same token we rarely think of them.... One may symbolize the individual life as a bank of issue. The bank lives on the credit of a gold reserve which is rarely seen, which lies at the bottom of metal coffers hidden in the vaults of the building. The most elementary caution will suggest that from time to time the effective condition of these guaranties--of these credences, one might say, that are the basis of credit--be passed in review.

The masses think that is is easy to flee from reality, when it is the most difficult thing in the world.