...all cynicism masks a failure to cope.
Art's cruel. You can get away with murder with words. But a picture is like a window straight through to your inmost heart.
To despise all effort is the greatest effort of all.
Liking other people is an illusion we have to cherish in ourselves if we are to live in society.
Alive. Alive in the way that death is alive.
In some mysterious way woods have never seemed to me to be static things. In physical terms, I move through them; yet in metaphysical ones, they seem to move through me.
The human race is unimportant. It is the self that must not be betrayed.' 'I suppose one could say that Hitler didn't betray his self.' He turned. 'You are right. He did not. But millions of Germans did betray their selves. That was the tragedy.'
Do you know that every great thing in the history of art and every beautiful thing in life is actually what you call nasty or has been caused by feelings that you would call nasty? By passion, by love, by hatred, by truth. Do you know that?
But I think the most harmful change brought about by Victorian science in our attitude to nature lies in the demand that our relation with it must be purposive, industrious, always seeking greater knowledge.
I read and I read; and I was like a medieval king, I had fallen in love with the picture long before I saw the reality.
You come to the United States not knowing what to expect. Then all your worst prejudices are confirmed.
I have a strange illusion quite often. I think I've become deaf. I have to make a little noise to prove I'm not. I clear my throat to show myself that everything is normal. It's like the little Japanese girl they found in the ruins of Hiroshima. Everything dead; and she was singing to her doll.
My hatred of crowds, the obviousness of crowds, of anything en masse. Is this why I like little-known books? A general desire to escape the main world.
Follow the accident, fear the fixed plan--that is the rule.
You wish to be liked. I wish simply to be. One day you will know what that means, perhaps. And you will smile. Not against me. But with me.
Death is the room that is always empty.
If a person is intelligent, then of course he is either an agnostic or an atheist. Just as he is a physical coward. They are automatic definitions of high intelligence.
The power of women! I've never felt so full of mysterious power. Men are a joke. We're so weak physically, so helpless with things. Still, even today. But we're stronger than they are. We can stand their cruelty. They can't stand ours.
And I just can't live in this present. I would go mad if I did.
We all write poems; it is simply that poets are the ones who write in words.
People knew less of each other, perhaps, but they felt more free of each other, and so were more individual. The entire world was not for them only a push or a switch away. Strangers were strange, and sometimes with an exciting, beautiful strangeness. It may be better for humanity that we should communicate more and more.
Wealth is a monster. It takes a month to learn to control it financially. And many years to learn to control it psychologically.
I just think of things as beautiful or not. Can't you understand? I don't think of good or bad. Just of beautiful or ugly. I think a lot of nice things are ugly and a lot of nasty things are beautiful.
There cannot be any true leisure until all the world possesses it equally.
Which are you drinking? The water or the wave?
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