Television is a medium of entertainment which permits millions of people to listen to the same joke at the same time, and yet remain lonesome.

Gradually we come to admit that Shakespeare understands a greater extent and variety of human life than Dante; but that Dante understands deeper degrees of degradation and higher degrees of exaltation.

This is one moment, / But know that another / Shall pierce you with a sudden painful joy.

The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality.

The river itself has no beginning or end. In its beginning, it is not yet the river; in the end it is no longer the river. What we call the headwaters is only a selection from among the innumerable sources which flow together to compose it. At what point in its course does the Mississippi become what the Mississippi means?

Accident is design / And design is accident / In a cloud of unknowing.

Time past and time future allow but a little consciousness. To be conscious is not to be in time.