When Heraclitus said that everything passes steadily along, he was not inciting us to make the best of the moment, an idea unseemly to his placid mind, but to pay attention to the pace of things. Each has its own rhythm: the nap of a dog, the procession of the equinoxes, the dances of Lydia, the majestically slow beat of the drums at Dodona, the swift runners at Olympia.

I’ve carved the puppet, and I manipulate the strings, but while it’s on stage, the show belongs to the puppet.

The birds suffer their suffering each in a lifetime, forgetting it as they go.

Imagination is like the drunk man who lost his watch and must get drunk again to find it.

nothing now exists that is so valuable as whatever theoretically might replace it.

Unless the work of art has wholly exhausted its makers attention, it fails. This is why works of great significance are demanding and why they are infinitely rewarding.

Sometimes when reading Goethe I have the paralyzing suspicion that he is trying to be funny.