Life forms a surface that acts as if it could not be otherwise, but under its skin things are pounding and pulsing.

It is life that does the thinking all around us, forming with playful ease the connections our reason can only laboriously patch together piecemeal, and never to such kaleidoscopic effect.

... for the modern soul, for which it is mere child's play to bridge oceans and continents, there is nothing so impossible as to find the contact with the souls dwelling just around the corner.

We have gained reality and lost dream. No more lounging under a tree and peering at the sky between one's big and second toes; there's work to be done. To be efficient, one cannot be hungry and dreamy but must eat steak and keep moving.

And what would you do, ... if you could rule the world for a day? I suppose I would have no choice but to abolish reality.

That the will of the people can be established by voting for democrats is, of course, a delusion. Yet when considering a non-threatening system for deciding between diverse interests, then voting, of course, can be regarded as a humane and civilized process.

Strong emotional experiences are for the most part impersonal. Anyone who has hated another person so much that only chance stands between that person and death knows this, as does whoever has fallen into the catastrophe of a deep depression, anyone who has loved a woman to the dregs, anyone who has beaten others bloody or ever come up behind another person with muscles trembling. "Losing one's head," language calls it. Emotional experience is, in itself, poor in qualities; qualities are brought to it by the person who has the experience.