Every ist writes his own autobiography.

All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on.

It is only the great men who are truly obscene. If they had not dared to be obscene, they could never have dared to be great.

Jealousy, that dragon which slays love under the pretence of keeping it alive.

Dancing is the loftiest, the most moving, the most beautiful of the arts, because it is no mere translation or abstraction from life; it is life itself.

All civilization has from time to time become a thin crust over a volcano of revolution.

If men and women are to understand each other, to enter into each other's nature with mutual sympathy, and to become capable of genuine comradeship, the foundation must be laid in youth.

There is nothing that war has ever achieved that we could not better achieve without it.

Charm is a woman's strength just as strength is a man's charm.

Still, whether we like it or not, the task of speeding up the decrease of the human population becomes increasingly urgent.

I always seem to have a vague feeling that he is a Satan among musicians, a fallen angel in the darkness who is perpetually seeking to fight his way back to happiness.

I like the imp / in impossibility

I've put my genius into my life I've only put my talent into my works.

All abuse and waste of God's creatures are spoil and robbery on the property of the Creator.

I don't type [when I write] because . . . I often have the feeling that everything flows directly from my right hand.

Black power got to moving so fast that we miscalculated the fallout. I certainly have to take some of the responsibility of that; but there was no way we anticipated the response.

A new question has arisen in modern man's mind, the question, namely, whether life is worth living...No sensible answer can be given to the question...because the question does not make any sense.

Swan, by Mary Oliver. Poems and prose. Reading from this book is as if visiting a very wise friend. There is wisdom and welcoming kindness on every page.

If I weren't a Christian Scientist, and I saw "Trog" advertised on a marquee across the street, I'd think I'd contemplate suicide.

Every great religion is, in truth, a concentration of great ideas, capable, as all ideas are, of infinite expansion and adaptation.

The right to use a thing comprehends a right to the means necessary to its use, and without which it would be useless.