For some reason or other man looks for the miracle, and to accomplish it he will wade through blood. He will debauch himself with ideas, he will reduce himself to a shadow if for only one second of his life he can close his eyes to the hideousness of reality. Everything is endured-disgrace, humiliation, poverty, war, crime, ennui-in the belief that overnight something will occur, a miracle, which will render life tolerable.

Imagination is the voice of daring. If there is anything Godlike about God it is that. He dared to imagine everything.

I read to be taken out of myself, to become ecstatic.

The new always carries with it the sense of violation, of sacrilege. What is dead is sacred; what is new, that is different, is evil, dangerous, or subversive.

We create our fate every day . . . most of the ills we suffer from are directly traceable to our own behavior.

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.

To live without killing is a thought which could electrify the world, if men were only capable of staying awake long enough to let the idea soak in.