Our firmest convictions are apt to be the most suspect, they mark our limitations and our bounds. Life is a pretty thing unless it is moved by the indomitable urge to extend its boundaries.

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 poet begins where the man ends. The man's lot is to live his human life, the poet's to invent what is nonexistent.

Life is an operation which is done in a forward direction. One lives toward the future, because to live consists inexorably in doing, in each individual life making itself.

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.

We cannot put off living until we are ready. The most salient characteristic of life is its coerciveness: it is always urgent, 'here and now,' without any possible postponement. Life is fired at us point-blank.