What is not in the open street is false, derived, that is to say, literature.

I don't think we should read for instruction but to give our souls a chance to luxuriate.

One of the reasons why so few of us ever act, instead of react, is because we are continually stifling our deepest impulses.

I wanted to feel the blood running back into my veins, even at the cost of annihilation. I wanted to shake the stone and light out of my system. I wanted the dark fecundity of nature, the deep well of the womb, silence, or else the lapping of the black waters of death. I wanted to be that night which the remorseless eye illuminated, a night diapered with stars and trailing comets. To be of night so frighteningly silent, so utterly incomprehensible and eloquent at the same time. Never more to speak or to listen or to think.

Life, as we all know, is conflict, and man, being part of life, is himself an expression of conflict. If he recognizes the fact and accepts it, he is apt, despite the conflict, to know peace and to enjoy it. But to arrive at this end, which is only a beginning (for we haven’t begun to live yet!), a man has got to learn the doctrine of acceptance, that is, of unconditional surrender, which is love.

Madness is tonic and invigorating. It makes the sane more sane. The only ones who are unable to profit by it are the insane.

In expanding the field of knowledge we but increase the horizon of ignorance.