Life is a series of collisions with the future; it is not the sum of what we have been, but what we yearn to be.

The truth is that no horizon is especially interesting by itself, by virtue of its peculiar content, and that any horizon, wide or narrow, brilliant or dull, varied or monotonous, may possess an interest of its own which merely requires a vital adjustment to be discovered.

Man in a word has no nature; what he has... is history.

The people with the clear heads are the ones who look life in the face, realize that everything in it is problematic, and feel themselves lost. And this is the simple truth: that to live is to feel oneself lost. Those who accept it have already begun to find themselves, to be on firm ground.

The characteristic of the hour is that the commonplace mind, knowing itself to be commonplace, has the assurance to proclaim the rights of the commonplace and to impose them wherever it will.

Poetry is adolescence fermented, and thus preserved.

The hero's will is not that of his ancestors nor of his society, but his own. This will to be oneself is heroism.