All great civilisations, in their early stages, are based on success in war.

A visual experience is vitalizing. Whereas to write great poetry, to draw continuously on one's inner life, is not merely exhausting, it is to keep alight a consuming fire.

To hurry through the rise and fall of a fine, full sentence is like defying the role of time in human life.

We can destroy ourselves by cynicism and disillusion, just as effectively as by bombs.

Pride, like humility, is destroyed by one's insistence that he possesses it.

One musn't overrate the culture of what used to be called "top people" before the wars. They had charming manners, but they were as ignorant as swans.

Devotion to the facts will always give the pleasures of recognition; adherence to the rules of design, the pleasures of order and certainty.