Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I feel that art has something to do with the achievement of stillness in the midst of chaos.
... an era of turmoil and ideological confusion, the principal phenomenon of the present age.
A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.
We mustn't forget how quickly the visions of genius become the canned goods of intellectuals.
I think that art has something to do with an arrest of attention in the midst of distraction.
It would not be practical for her to hate herself. Luckily, God sends a substitute, a husband.
The body, she says, is subject to the force of gravity. But the soul is ruled by levity, pure.
You can spend the entire second half of your life recovering from the mistakes of the first half.
Unfortunately for the betterment of mankind it is not always the fair-minded who are in the right.
The best and purest human beings, from the beginning of time, have understood that life is sacred.
A human soul devoid of longing was a soul deformed, deprived of its highest good, sick unto death.
To tell the truth I never had it so good. But I lacked the strength of character to bear such joy.
She's very pretty but she's honey from the icebox, if you know what I mean. Cold sweets won't spread.
When I didn't argue he was satisfied he had persuaded me, and was not the first to make that mistake.
Any artist should be grateful for a naive grace which puts him beyond the need to reason elaborately.
We take foreigners to be incomplete Americans -- convinced that we must help and hasten their evolution.
Ninety per cent of life is a nightmare, do you think I am going to get it rounded up to hundred per cent?
Myself is thus and so, and will continue thus and so. And why fight it? My balance comes from instability.
California is like an artificial limb the rest of the country doesn't really need. You can quote me on that.
There is much to be said for exotic marriages. If your husband is a bore, it takes years longer to discover.
My face too blind, my mind too limited, my instincts too narrow. But this intensity, doesn't it mean anything?
Human character is smaller now, people don't have durable passions; they've replaced passions with excitement.
The secret motive of the absent-minded is to be innocent while guilty. Absent-mindedness is spurious innocence.
Our society, like decadent Rome, has turned into an amusement society, with writers chief among the court jesters
People don't realize how much they are in the grip of ideas. We live among ideas much more than we live in nature.
There are evils that have the ability to survive identification and go on for ever... money, for instance, or war.
One must bear in mind the odd angle or slant that the rays of love have to take in order to reach a heart like mine.
I am more stupid about some things than others; not equally stupid in all directions; I am not a well-rounded person.
The main reason for rewriting is not to achieve a smooth surface, but to discover the inner truth of your characters.
Associate with the noblest people you can find; read the best books; live with the mighty; but learn to be happy alone.
A man must have limits and cannot give in to the wild desires to be everything and everyone and everything to everyone.
Everybody knows there is no fineness or accuracy of suppression; if you hold down one thing, you hold down the adjoining.
Art attempts to find in the universe, in matter as well as in the facts of life, what is fundamental, enduring, essential.
A novel is balanced between a few true impressions and the multitude of false ones that make up most of what we call life.
I think that New York is not the cultural centre of America, but the business and administrative centre of American culture.
I seem to have the blind self-acceptance of the eccentric who can't conceive that his eccentricities are not clearly understood.
Is love supposed to ruin you? It seems to me you shouldn't destroy yourself out of life for purposes of love--or what good is it?
It wasn't that he was specially ungenerous but that he put things off to give his generosity a longer and more significant route.
There is only one way to defeat the enemy, and that is to write as well as one can. The best argument is an undeniably good book.
I pretended not to understand. One of life's hardest jobs, to make a quick understanding slow. I think I succeeded, thought Herzog.
We are funny creatures. We don't see the stars as they are, so why do we love them? They are not small gold objects, but endless fire.
Humankind struggles with collective powers for its freedom, the individual struggles with dehumanization for the possession of his soul.
In an age of madness, to expect to be untouched by madness is a form of madness. But the pursuit of sanity can be a form of madness, too
It is sometimes necessary to repeat what all know. All mapmakers should place the Mississippi in the same location and avoid originality.
I have begun in old age to understand...that we seldom if ever realize how generous we are to ourselves, and just how stingy with others.
The flesh would shrink and go, the blood would dry, but no one believes in his mind of minds or heart of hearts that the pictures do stop.
A man may say, "From now on I'm going to speak the truth." But the truth hears him and runs away and hides before he's even done speaking.
Erotic practices have become diversified. Sex used to be a single-crop farming, like cotton or wheat; now people raise all kinds of things.
Also, he was smoking a cigar, and when a man is smoking a cigar, wearing a hat, he has an advantage; it is harder to find out how he feels.
It's usually the selfish people who are loved the most. They do what you deny yourself, and you love them for it. You give them your heart.