From what I have seen, I am driven to the conclusion that religion is only good for good people.

This grossly advertised wonder [Venice], this gold idol with clay feet, this trompe-l'oeil, this painted deception, this cliche-what intelligent iconoclast could fail to experience a destructive impulse in her presence?

You can date the evolving life of a mind, like the age of a tree, by the rings of friendship formed by the expanding central trunk.

People with bad consciences always fear the judgment of children.

It really takes a hero to live any kind of spiritual life without religious belief.

For self-realization, a rebel demands a strong authority, a worthy opponent, God to his Lucifer.

I suppose everyone continues to be interested in the quest for the self, but what you feel when you're older, I think, is that ... you really must make the self. It is absolutely useless to look for it, you won't find it, but it's possible in some sense to make it. I don't mean in the sense of making a mask, a Yeatsian mask. But you finally begin in some sense to make and choose the self you want.