The rare moment is not the moment when there is something worth looking at, but the moment when we are capable of seeing.

Civilizations die from philosophical calm, irony, and a sense of fair play quite as surely as they die of debauchery.

Logic is the art of going wrong with confidence.

Only those within whose own consciousness the sun rise and set, the leaves burgeon and wither, can be said to be aware of what living is.

The cockroach and the bird were both here long before we were. Both could.

There are some optimists who search eagerly for the skunk cabbage which in February sometimes pushes itself up through the ice, and who call it a sign of spring. I wish that I could feel that way about it, but I do not. The truth of the matter, to me, is simply that skunk cabbage blooms in the winter time.

Rhetoric takes no real account of the art in literature and morality takes no account of the art in life.