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.

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

Where the electron behaves and misbehaves as it will, where the forces tie themselves up into knots of atoms and come united.

There is a sixth sense, the natural religious sense, the sense of wonder.

If a woman hasn't got a tiny streak of harlot in her, she's a dry stick as a rule.

I always feel as if I stood naked for the fire of Almighty God to go through me--and it's rather an awful feeling. One has to be so terribly religious to be an artist.

Try to find your deepest issue in every confusion, and abide by that.