The essential function of art is moral. But a passionate, implicit morality, not didactic. A morality which changes the blood, rather than the mind.

The refined punishments of the spiritual mode are usually much more indecent and dangerous than a good smack.

One's action ought to come out of an achieved stillness: not to be a mere rushing on.

I should like [people] to like the purely individual thing in themselves, which makes them act in singleness. and They only like to do the collective thing.

There is an eternal vital correspondence between our blood and the sun: there is an eternal vital correspondence between our nerves and the moon. If we get out of contact and harmony with the sun and moon, then both turn into great dragons of destruction against us.

For man, the vast marvel is to be alive. For man, as for flower and beast and bird, the supreme triumph is to be most vividly, most perfectly alive. Whatever the unborn may know, they cannot know the beauty, the marvel of being alive in the flesh. The dead may look after the afterwards. But the magnificent here and now of life in the flesh is ours, and ours alone, and ours only for a time.

I shall be glad when you have strangled the invincible respectability that dogs your steps.