If we apply the term revolution to what happened in North America between 1776 and 1829, it has a special meaning. Normally, the word describes the process by which man transforms himself from one kind of man, living in one kind of society, with one way of looking at the world, into another kind of man, another society, another conception of life.... The American case is different: it is not a question of the Old Man transforming himself into the New, but of the New Man becoming alive to the fact that he is new, that he has been transformed already without his having realized it.

I don't think the mystical experience can be verbalized. When the ego disappears, so does power over language.

No being can make another one happy.

Perhaps there is only one cardinal sin: impatience. Because of impatience we were driven out of Paradise, because of impatience we cannot return.

If equal affection cannot be, let the more loving be me.

Aphorisms are essentially an aristocratic genre of writing. The aphorist does not argue or explain, he asserts; and implicit in his assertion is a conviction that he is wiser and more intelligent than his readers.

Music can be made anywhere, is invisible and does not smell.