“Do you know how it is when one wakes at night suddenly and asks, listening to the pounding heart: what more do you want, insatiable?”

Irony is the glory of slaves.

The partition separating life from death is so tenuous. The unbelievable fragility of our organism suggests a vision on a screen: a kind of mist condenses itself into a human shape, lasts a moment and scatters.

The voice of passion is better than the voice of reason. The passionless cannot change history.

Not that I want to be a god or a hero. Just to change into a tree, grow for ages, not hurt anyone.

It’s true that what is morbid is highly valued today, and so you may think that I am only joking or that I’ve devised just one more means of praising Art with the help of irony.

We have become indifferent to content, and react, not even to form, but to technique, to technical efficiency itself.

The history of my stupidity would fill many volumes.

I was left behind with the immensity of existing things. A sponge, suffering because it cannot saturate itself; a river, suffering because reflections of clouds and trees are not clouds and trees.

Be young forever, seasons of the earth.

Language is the only homeland.

All was taken away from you: white dresses, wings, even existence.

For a country without a past is nothing, a word That, hardly spoken, loses its meaning, A perishable wall destroyed by flame, An echo of animal emotions.

The revolt against one’s environment is usually ‘shame’ of one’s environment.

The purpose of poetry is to remind us how difficult it is to remain just one person, for our house is open, there are no keys in the doors, and invisible guests come in and out at will.

I liked beaches, swimming pools, and clinics for there they were the bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh. I pitied them and myself, but this will not protect me. The word and the thought are over.

I have no wisdom, no skills, and no faith but I received strength, it tears the world apart. I shall break, a heavy wave, against its shores and a young wave will cover my trace.

Fear is stupid, so are regrets.

An insincere and evil friend is more to be feared than a wild beast; a wild beast may wound your body, but an evil friend will wound your mind.

They lose the day in expectation of the night, and the night in fear of the dawn

Courage is not simply one of the virtues but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means at the point of highest reality.

Conscience doth make cowards of us all.

Only those are fit to live who do not fear to die; and none are fit to die who have shrunk from the joy of life and the duty of life. Both life and death are parts of the same Great Adventure.

Hope and fear are both phantoms that arise from thinking of the self. When we don’t see the self as self, what do we have to fear?

You must never be fearful about what you are doing when it is right.