“Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically.”
Age“It is a fine thing to establish one's own religion in one's heart, not to be dependent on tradition and second-hand ideals. Life will seem to you, later, not a lesser, but a greater thing.”
Religion“Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically.”
Age“Design in art, is a recognition of the relation between various things, various elements in the creative flux. You can't invent a design. You recognize it, in the fourth dimension. That is, with your blood and your bones, as well as with your eyes.”
Art“Death is the only pure, beautiful conclusion of a great passion.”
Death“Myth is an attempt to narrate a whole human experience, of which the purpose is too deep, going too deep in the blood and soul, for mental explanation or description.”
Experience“Reason is a supple nymph, and slippery as a fish by nature. She had as leave give her kiss to an absurdity any day, as to syllogistic truth. The absurdity may turn out truer.”
Nature“There is no such thing as liberty. You only change one sort of domination for another. All we can do is to choose our master.”
Change“Men and women should stay apart, till their hearts grow gentle towards one another again.”
Women“So long as you don't feel life's paltry and a miserable business, the rest doesn't matter, happiness or unhappiness.”
Business“Life is a travelling to the edge of knowledge, then a leap taken.”
Knowledge“They say geniuses mostly have great mothers. They mostly have sad fates.”
Sad“In every living thing there is the desire for love.”
Love“The only history is a mere question of one's struggle inside oneself. But that is the joy of it. One need neither discover Americas nor conquer nations, and yet one has as great a work as Columbus or Alexander, to do.”
History“Men! The only animal in the world to fear.”
Fear“I want to live my life so that my nights are not full of regrets.”
Life“The fairest thing in nature, a flower, still has its roots in earth and manure.”
Nature“A man has no religion who has not slowly and painfully gathered one together, adding to it, shaping it and one's religion is never complete and final, it seems, but must always be undergoing modification.”
Religion“The only justice is to follow the sincere intuition of the soul, angry or gentle. Anger is just, and pity is just, but judgement is never just.”
Anger“The essential function of art is moral. But a passionate, implicit morality, not didactic. A morality which changes the blood, rather than the mind.”
Art“Creation destroys as it goes, throws down one tree for the rise of another. But ideal mankind would abolish death, multiply itself million upon million, rear up city upon city, save every parasite alive, until the accumulation of mere existence is swollen to a horror.”
Death“Money is our madness, our vast collective madness.”
Money