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

Evil, what is evil? There is only one evil, to deny life As Rome denied Etruria And mechanical America Montezuma still

In America the cohesion was a matter of choice and will. But in Europe it was organic.

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.

Man is a thought-adventurer.

Shall I tell you what you have that other men don't?.... It's the courage of your own tenderness.

This is what I believe: That I am I. That my soul is a dark forest. That my known self will never be more than a little clearing in the forest. That gods, strange gods, come forth from the forest into the clearing of my known self, and then go back. That I must have the courage to let them come and go. That I will never let mankind put anything over me, but that I will try always to recognize and submit to the gods in me and the gods in other men and women. There is my creed.