The function of art is to acquaint the beholder with something he has not known before.

Most new discoveries are suddenly-seen things that were always there.

Language is, without a doubt, the most momentous and at the same time the most mysterious product of the human mind.

Only a creature that can think symbolically about life can conceive of its own death. Our knowledge of death is part of our knowledge of life.

The limits of thought are not so much set from outside, by the fullness or poverty of experiences that meet the mind, as from within, by the power of conception, the wealth of formulative notions with which the mind meets experiences.

The first impression of a work of art is its otherness from reality.

If a work of art is a projection of feeling, its kinship with organic nature will emerge, no matter through how many transformations, logically and inevitably.