The national characteristics... the restless metaphysical curiosity, the tenderness of good living and the passionate individualism. This is the invisible constant in a place with which the ordinary tourist can get in touch just by sitting quite quietly over a glass of wine in a Paris bistro.

The richest love is that which submits to the arbitration of time.

An idea is like a rare bird which cannot be seen. What one sees is the trembling of the branch it has just left.

Art—the meaning of the pattern of our common actions in reality. The cloth-of-gold that hides behind the sackcloth of reality, forced out by the pain of human memory.

Somewhere in the heart of experience there is an order and a coherence which we might purprise if we were attentive enough, loving enough, or patient enough.

All artists today are expected to cultivate a little fashionable unhappiness.

Who invented the human heart, I wonder? Tell me, and then show me the place where he was hanged.