To joke in the face of danger is the supreme politeness, a delicate refusal to cast oneself as a tragic hero.

In the scenery of spring,
nothing is better, nothing worse,
The flowering branches are
of themselves, some short, some long.

A community is like a ship, everyone ought to be prepared to take the helm...

I am inventing a language which must necessarily burst forth from a very new poetics, that could be defined in a couple of words: Paint, not the thing, but the effect it produces.

Who knows, my God, but that the universe is not one vast sea of compassion actually, the veritable holy honey, beneath all this show of personality and cruelty?

I think it not improbable that man, like the grub that prepares a chamber for the winged thing it never has seen but is to be, that man may have cosmic destinies that he does not understand.

Ideals are like stars; you will not succeed in touching them with your hands. But like the seafaring man on the desert of waters, you choose them as your guides, and following them you will reach your destiny.