Whatever there be of progress in life comes not through adaptation but through daring.
To be joyous is to be a madman in a world of sad ghosts.
Everything hinges on how you look at things
We create our fate every day . . . most of the ills we suffer from are directly traceable to our own behavior.
Man has demonstrated that he is master of everything - except his own nature.
Dedication is not what others expect of you, it is what you can give to others.
A book lying idle on a shelf is wasted ammunition.
A new world is not made simply by trying to forget the old. A new world is made with a new spirit, with new values. Our world may have begun that way, but today it is caricature. Our world is a world of things. What we dread most, in the face of the impending debacle, is that we shall be obliged to give up our gewgaws, our gadgets, all the little comforts that have made us so uncomfortable. We are not peaceful souls; we are smug, timid, queasy and quaky.
We have been educated to such a fine - or dull - point that we are incapable of enjoying something new, something different, until we are first told what it's all about. We don't trust our five senses; we rely on our critics and educators, all of whom are failures in the realm of creation. In short, the blind lead the blind. It's the democratic way.
The art of living is based on rhythm - on give & take, ebb & flow, light & dark, life & death. By acceptance of all aspects of life, good & bad, right & wrong, yours & mine, the static, defensive life, which is what most people are cursed with, is converted into a dance, 'the dance of life,' metamorphosis.
The man who looks for security, even in the mind, is like a man who would chop off his limbs in order to have artificial ones which will give him no pain or trouble.
Who but the artist has the power to open man up, to set free the imagination? The others - priest, teacher, saint, statesman, warrior - hold us to the path of history. They keep us chained to the rock, that the vultures may eat out our hearts. It is the artist who has the courage to go against the crowd; he is the unrecognized "hero of our time" - and of all time.
A man writes to throw off the poison which he has accumulated because of his false way of life. He is trying to recapture his innocence, yet all he succeeds in doing (by writing) is to inoculate the world with a virus of his disillusionment. No man would set a word down on paper if he had the courage to live out what he believed in.
The goal of life is not to possess power but to radiate it.
To paint is to love again, and to love is to live life to the fullest.
To make living itself an art, that is the goal.
Honest criticism means nothing: what one wants is unrestrained passion, fire for fire.
The truly great writer does not want to write: he wants the world to be a place in which he can live the life of the imagination. The first quivering word he puts to paper is the word of the wounded angel: pain.
...when you are convinced that all the exits are blocked, either you take to believing in miracles or you stand still like the hummingbird. The miracle is that the honey is always there, right under your nose, only you were too busy searching elsewhere to realize it. The worst is not death but being blind, blind to the fact that everything about life is in the nature of the miraculous.
Living apart and at peace with myself,I came to realize more vividly the meaning of the doctrine of acceptance. To refrain from giving advice, to refrain from meddling in the affairs of others, to refrain even though the motives be the highest, from tampering with anothers way of life-so simple, yet so difficult for an active spirit. Hands Off.
I need to be alone. I need to ponder my shame and my despair in seclusion; I need the sunshine and the paving stones of the streets without companions, without conversation, face to face with myself, with only the music of my heart for company.
Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such.
I found that what I had desired all my life was not to live - if what others are doing is called living - but to express myself.
Every man has his own destiny: the only imperative is to follow it, to accept it, no matter where it leads him.
'Life', said Emerson, "consists in what a man is thinking all day." If that be so, then my life is nothing but a big intestine.
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