Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
It isn't the oceans which cut us off from the world - it's the American way of looking at things.
At the bottom of every frozen heart there is a drop or two of love―just enough to feed the birds.
The only thing we never get enough of is love; and the only thing we never give enough of is love.
The full and joyful acceptance of the worst in oneself may be the only sure way of transforming it.
I have always looked upon decay as being just as wonderful and rich an expression of life as growth.
To the man whose senses are alive and alert there is not even the need to stir from one's threshold.
Destiny is what you are supposed to do in life. Fate is what kicks you in the ass to make you do it.
Once you have given up the ghost, everything follows with dead certainty, even in the midst of chaos.
The only law which is really lived up to wholeheartedly and with a vengeance is the law of conformity.
I am of the order whose purpose is not to teach the world a lesson but to explain that school is over.
What distinguishes the majority of men from the few is their ability to act according to their beliefs.
For one crime which is expiated in prison ten thousand are committed thoughtlessly by those who condemn.
We should not stop to reflect, compare, analyze, possess, but flow on and through, endlessly, like music.
The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.
And what is the potential man, after all? Is he not the sum of all that is human? Divine, in other words?
Day by day. No yesterdays and no tomorrows. The barometer never changes, the flag is always at half-mast.
I had learned to harness ignorance with presumption. I was ready to become an unacknowledged watercolorist.
To have her here in bed with me, breathing on me, her hair in my mouth—I count that something of a miracle.
The poem is the dream made flesh, in a two-fold sense: as work of art, and as life, which is a work of art.
Any genuine philosophy leads to action and from action back again to wonder, to the enduring fact of mystery.
The legal system is often a mystery, and we, its priests, preside over rituals baffling to everyday citizens.
What seems nasty, painful, evil can become a source of beauty, joy, and strength, if faced with an open mind.
Plots and character don't make life. Life is here and now, anytime you say the word, anytime you let her rip.
The world is not to be put in order; the world is order, incarnate. It is for us to harmonize with this order.
We create our fate every day . . . most of the ills we suffer from are directly traceable to our own behavior.
New York has a trip-hammer vitality which drives you insane with restlessness if you have no inner stabilizer.
Whoever uses the spirit that is in him creatively is an artist. To make living itself an art, that is the goal.
Every man has his own destiny: the only imperative is to follow it, to accept it, no matter where it leads him.
An artist earns the right to call himself a creator only when he admits to himself that he is but an instrument.
Every time you come to the limit of what is demanded of you, you are faced with the same problem-to be yourself!
Somewhere along the way one discovers that what one has to tell is not nearly so important as the telling itself.
It is with the soul that we grasp the essence of another human being, not with the mind, nor even with the heart.
If I am against the condition of the world, it is not because I am a moralist - it is because I want to laugh more.
Our own physical body possesses a wisdom which we who inhabit the body lack. We give it orders which make no sense.
There are only three things to be done with a woman. You can love her, suffer for her, or turn her into literature.
France may one day exist no more, but the Dordogne will live on just as dreams live on and nourish the souls of men.
The prisoner is not the one who has commited a crime, but the one who clings to his crime and lives it over and over.
Instead of asking 'How much damage will the work in question bring about?' why not ask 'How much good? How much joy?'
Everyman, when he gets quiet, when he becomes desperately honest with himself, is capable of uttering profound truths.
Imagination is the voice of daring. If there is anything Godlike about God it is that. He dared to imagine everything.
There is only one thing which interests me vitally now, and that is the recording of all that which is omitted in books
True strength lies in submission which permits one to dedicate his life, through devotion, to something beyond himself.
We don't trust our five senses; we rely on our critics and educators, all of whom are failures in the realm of creation.
I demanded a realm in which I should be both master and slave at the same time: The world of art is the only such realm.
I had a microscopic eye for the blemish, for the grain of ugliness which to me constituted the sole beauty of the object.
The world itself is pregnant with failure, is the perfect manifestation of imperfection, of the consciousness of failure.
But it's just because the chances are all against you, just because there is so little hope, that life is sweet over here.
We live in the mind, in ideas, in fragments. We no longer drink in the wild outer music of the streets - we remember only.
Your nearness is the nearness of planets. I am the void between you. If I withdraw there will be no void for you to swim in.
On the meridian of time, there is no injustice: there is only the poetry of motion creating the illusion of truth and drama.