All creative art is magic, is evocation of the unseen in forms persuasive, enlightening, familiar and surprising.

It's only those who do nothing that make no mistakes, I suppose.

And suddenly I rejoiced in the great security of the sea as compared with the unrest of the land, in my choice of that untempted life presenting no disquieting problems, invested with an elementary moral beauty by the absolute straightforwardness of its appeal and by the singleness of its purpose.

I couldn't have felt more of lonely desolation somehow, had I been robbed of a belief or had missed my destiny in life.

the mind of man is capable of anything--because everything is in it, all the past as well as the future

We live in the flicker -- may it last as long as the old earth keeps rolling! But darkness was here yesterday.

The mysteries of a universe made of drops of fire and clods of mud do not concern us in the least. The fate of humanity condemned ultimately to perish from cold is not worth troubling about. If you take it to heart it becomes an unendurable tragedy. If you believe in improvement you must weep, for the attained perfection must end in cold, darkness and silence. In a dispassionate view the ardour for reform, improvement for virtue, and knowledge, and even for beauty is only a vain sticking up for appearances as though one were anxious about the cut of one's clothes in a community of blind men.