If, therefore, nonsense is really to be the literature of the future, it must have its own version of the Cosmos to offer; the world must not only be tragic, romantic, and religious, it must be nonsensical also.

Children feel the whiteness of the lily with a graphic and passionate clearness which we cannot give them at all. The only thing we can give them is information-the information that if you break the lily in two it won't grow again.

I would not say that old men grow wise, for men never grow wise; and many old men retain a very attractive childishness and cheerful innocence. Elderly people are often much more romantic than younger people, and sometimes even more adventurous, having begun to realize how many things they do not know.

Poets do not go mad, but chess players do.

A mystic is a man who separates heaven and earth even if he enjoys them both.

Real development is not leaving things behind, as on a road, but drawing life from them, as from a root.

It is very good for a man to talk about what he does not understand; as long as he understands that he does not understand it.