Tell me to what you pay attention and I will tell you who you are.

Nobility is defined by the demands it makes on us - by obligations, not by rights. Noblesse oblige. 'To live as one likes is plebeian; the noble man aspires to order and law.'

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.

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.

The person portrayed and the portrait are two entirely different things.

In order to master the unruly torrent of life the learned man meditates, the poet quivers, and the political hero erects the fortress of his will.

"Natural" man is always there, under the changeable historical man. We call him and he comes-a little sleepy, benumbed, without his lost form of instinctive hunter, but, after all, still alive. Natural man is first prehistoric man-the hunter.