Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience, and our aesthetic enjoyment is recognition of the pattern.

Other nations of different habits are not enemies: they are godsends. Men require of their neighbours something sufficiently akin to be understood, something sufficiently different to provoke attention, and something great enough to command admiration. We must not expect, however, all the virtues.

On the ostensible exactitude of certain branches of human knowledge, including mathematics. The exactness is a fake.

Art attracts us only by what it reveals of our most secret self.

What the learned world tends to offer is one second-hand scrap of information illustrating ideas derived from another second-hand scrap of information. The second-handedness of the learned world is the secret of its mediocrity.

The preternatural solemnity of a good many of the professionally religious is to me a point against them.

In a certain sense, everything is everywhere at all times. For every location involves an aspect of itself in every other location. Thus every spatio-temporal standpoint mirrors the world