There may be as much nobility in being last as in being first, because the two positions are equally necessary in the world, the one to complement the other.

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.

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.

Better beware of notions like genius and inspiration; they are a sort of magic wand and should be used sparingly by anybody who wants to see things clearly.

Love is that splendid triggering of human vitality the supreme activity which nature affords anyone for going out of himself toward someone else.

Being an artist means ceasing to take seriously that very serious person we are when we are not an artist.

Law is born from despair of human nature.

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.

To be surprised, to wonder, is to begin to understand.

The good is, like nature, an immense landscape in which man advances through centuries of exploration.

We cannot put off living until we are ready.

A revolution only lasts fifteen years, a period which coincides with the effectiveness of a generation.

The difficulties which I meet with in order to realize my existence are precisely what awaken and mobilize my activities, my capacities.

Living is a constant process of deciding what we are going to do.

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.

We live at a time when man believes himself fabulously capable of creation, but he does not know what to create.

The metaphor is perhaps one of man's most fruitful potentialities. Its efficacy verges on magic, and it seems a tool for creation which God forgot inside one of His creatures when He made him.

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.

Effort is only effort when it begins to hurt.

An 'unemployed' existence is a worse negation of life than death itself.

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

An idea is a putting truth in check-mate.

Rancor is an outpouring of a feeling of inferiority.

Youth does not require reasons for living, it only needs pretexts.

Under the species of Syndicalism and Fascism there appears for the first time in Europe a type of man who does not want to give reasons or to be right, but simply shows himself resolved to impose his opinions.

Abasement, degradation is simply the manner of life of the man who has refused to be what it is his duty to be.

Excellence means when a man or woman asks of himself more than others do.

We do not live to think, but, on the contrary, we think in order that we may succeed in surviving.

For the person for whom small things do not exist, the great is not great.

To live is to feel oneself lost.

Hatred is a feeling which leads to the extinction of values.

We distinguish the excellent man from the common man by saying that the former is the one who makes great demands on himself, and the latter who makes no demands on himself.

There may be as much nobility in being last as in being first, because the two positions are equally necessary in the world, the one to complement the other.

The essence of man is, discontent, divine discontent; a sort of love without a beloved, the ache we feel in a member we no longer have.

I am I plus my circumstances.

I can remember the frustration of not being able to talk. I knew what I wanted to say, but I could not get the words out, so I would just scream.

What I try to do for my readers is to pass on some of the things that I found out about being thirteen after doing it for forty years.

In this watering-place I acted an heroic character, badly studied; and being a novice on such a stage, I forgot my part before a pair of lovely blue eyes.

Young people discovering their sexuality must know they walk with a strong tradition and that they are not alone. They have a right to information without being pressured.

Being a publicist is like management in a lot of ways - you're their friend, you're their mother, you're their confidante.

I mean, all alternative comedy is are comedians that have being doing it for so long, for so long, that they were relaxed enough to start becoming personal on stage.

I became hooked on the idea of being able to shoot an image and process it myself, and end up with a product.

Being a cover artist is not like being a real artist. That's just copying what someone else did.

It is too maddening. I've got to fly off, right now, to some devilish navy yard, three hours in a seasick steamer, and after being heartily sick, I'll have to speak three times, and then I'll be sick coming home. Still, who would not be sick for England?

I don't like being recognised, I have no interest in being famous at all, I just do what I do. If I could be like Captain Kirk and beam myself up and then beam myself down, I would!

I'm glad I'm not Brezhnev. Being the Russian leader in the Kremlin. You never know if someone's tape recording what you say.

Being a musician is what I do, but it's not what I am.

We're all like children. We may think we grow up, but to me, being grown up is death, stopping thinking, trying to find out things, going on learning.

We've had it very clear to the Bosnians that our obligation to equip and train their forces is completely conditional on the foreign forces being gone.