Consciousness is an end in itself. We torture ourselves getting somewhere, and when we get there it is nowhere, for there is nowhere to get to.

Let there be an end ... of all this welter of pity, which is only self-pity reflected onto some obvious surface.

Oh, what a catastrophe, what a maiming of love when it was made personal, merely personal feeling. This is what is the matter with us: we are bleeding at the roots because we are cut off from the earth and sun and stars. Love has become a grinning mockery because, poor blossom, we plucked it from its stem on the Tree of Life and expected it to keep on blooming in our civilized vase on the table.

Man has little needs and deeper needs. We have fallen into the mistake of living from our little needs till we have almost lost our deeper needs in a sort of madness.

To our senses, the elements are four and have ever been, and will ever be for they are the elements of life, of poetry, and of perception, the four Great Ones, the Four Roots, the First Four of Fire and the Wet, Earth and the wide Air of the World. To find the other many elements, you must go to the laboratory and hunt them down. But the four we have always with us, they are our world. Or rather, they have us with them.

In the end, for congenial sympathy, for poetry, for work, for original feeling and expression, for perfect companionship with one's friends--give me the country.

Their whole life depends on spending money, and now they’ve got none to spend. That’s our civilization and our education: bring up the masses to depend entirely on spending money, and then the money gives out.