Art and disease proliferate via contagion, and similar conditions favor both.

In every sphere of social interaction, that hermeneutic leap—that ability to put yourself in the mind frame of the other—is a virtue and a blessing.

When stealing from other players, an older musician wisely advised me, choose a different instrument from your own, and people won’t notice the theft.

Books had taught me new ideas and had shown me ways of life that I would not have known about otherwise, and they offered a refuge when, like now, real life seemed too hard.

There is what we desire to do, and what we are able to do. When those two things don’t coincide, which path should we pursue to find happiness?

Solitude is the biggest medicine for once peace, It makes your heart pure and calm.

Mystery magnifies danger, as a fog the sun, the hand that warned Belshazzar derived its horrifying effect from the want of a body.

Now the standard cure for one who is sunk is to consider those in actual destitution or physical suffering

This sign I give you: every people speaks its tongue of good and evil, which the neighbor does not understand. It has invented its own language of customs and rights.

I await the hour when a journalist can be driven from the press room for venal practices, as a minister can be unfrocked, or a lawyer disbarred.

Man must speak, then sing, then dance. The speaking is the brain, the thinking man. The singing is the emotion. The dancing is the Dionysian ecstasy which carries away all.

Can you open and close the gate of Heaven and act like a woman?

There is only one thing in life you can control: Your own effort.