The trend towards pure art betrays not arrogance, as is often thought, but modesty. Art that has rid itself of human pathos is a thing without consequence.

Rancor is an outpouring of a feeling of inferiority.

We need to study the whole of history, not to fall back into it, but to see if we can escape from it.

The type of human being we prefer reveals the contours of our heart.

Effort is only effort when it begins to hurt.

Tell me to what you pay attention and I will tell you who you are.

Life is a series of collisions with the future.

I am I plus my surroundings; and if I do not preserve the latter, I do not preserve myself.

An 'unemployed' existence is a worse negation of life than death itself.

To wonder is to begin to understand.

We distinguish the excellent man from the common man by saying that the former is the one who makes great demands on himself, and the latter who makes no demands on himself.

A flower in a desert still has no reason to envy a thorn in a rainforest.

How wrong and petty any life is.

All invitations must proceed from heaven perhaps; perhaps it is futile for men to initiate their own unity, they do but widen the gulfs between them by the attempt.

Winners are not those who never fail, but those who never quit.

Show love! Love feels good!

Outside the ring of dancing warriors with spears and axes stood wolves at a respectful distance, watching and waiting.

Good Government is not intrusive the people are hardly aware of it; the next best is felt yet loved; then comes that which is known and feared; the worst government is hated.

I don't know what it means to say that 'the internet should have a voice in Washington'.

Poetry is like making a joke. If you get one word wrong at the end of a joke, you've lost the whole thing.

But of all footmen the lowest class is literary footmen.