If only we could live two lives: the first in which to make one's mistakes, and the second in which to profit by them.

There are three cures for ennui: sleep, drink and travel.

I believe a man is born first unto himself - for the happy developing of himself, while the world is a nursery, and the pretty things are to be snatched for, and pleasant things tasted; some people seem to exist thus right to the end. But most are born again on entering manhood; then they are born to humanity, to a consciousness of all the laughing, and the never-ceasing murmur of pain and sorrow that comes from the terrible multitudes of brothers.

When I read Shakespeare I am struck with wonder that such trivial people should muse and thunder in such lovely language.

Why doesn't the past decently bury itself, instead of sitting waiting to be admired by the present?

I love trying things and discovering how I hate them.

When van Gogh paints sunflowers, he reveals, or achieves, the vivid relation between himself, as man, and the sunflower, as sunflower, at that quick moment of time. His painting does not represent the sunflower itself. We shall never know what the sunflower itself is. And the camera will visualize the sunflower far more perfectly than van Gogh can.