Example moves the world more than doctrine. The great exemplars are the poets of action, and it makes little difference whether they be forces for good or forces for evil.

Whatever there be of progress in life comes not through adaptation but through daring.

There is nothing strange about fear: no matter in what guise it presents itself it is something with which we are all so familiar that when a man appears who is without it we are at once enslaved by him.

Art teaches nothing, except the significance of life.

Each man has his own way of being himself and of saying it so ultimately that he can't be denied.

We have been educated to such a fine - or dull - point that we are incapable of enjoying something new, something different, until we are first told what it's all about. We don't trust our five senses; we rely on our critics and educators, all of whom are failures in the realm of creation. In short, the blind lead the blind. It's the democratic way.

I had a microscopic eye for the blemish, for the grain of ugliness which to me constituted the sole beauty of the object.