Water is H2O, hydrogen two parts, oxygen one, but there is also a third thing, that makes it water and nobody knows what that is.

America exhausts the springs of one's soul - I suppose that's what it exists for. It lives to see all real spontaneity expire. But anyhow it doesn't grind on an old nerve as Europe seems to.

Literary criticism can be no more than a reasoned account of the feeling produced upon the critic by the book he is criticising.

Love is the hastening gravitation of spirit towards spirit, and body towards body, in the joy of creation.

It is so much more difficult to live with one's body than with one's soul. One's body is so much more exacting: what it won't have it won't have, and nothing can make bitter into sweet.

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

A museum is not a first-hand contact: it is an illustrated lecture. And what one wants is the actual vital touch.