True contentment is a thing as active as agriculture. It is the power of getting out of any situation all that there is in it. It is arduous and it is rare.

Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists very seldom. I am not, as will be seen, in any sense attacking logic: I only say that this danger does lie in logic, not in imagination.

Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all.

A man cannot have the energy to produce good art without having the energy to wish to pass beyond it.

When we really worship anything, we love not only its clearness but its obscurity. We exult in its very invisibility.

Even a bad shot is dignified when he accepts a duel.

In the glad old days, before the rise of modern morbidities...it used to be thought a disadvantage to be misunderstood.