Human language is mythological and metaphorical by nature.

The chances are that, in the course of his lifetime, the major poet will write more bad poems than the minor, simply because major poets write a lot.

To pray is to pay attention to something or someone other than oneself. Whenever a man so concentrates his attention - on a landscape, a poem, a geometrical problem, an idol, or the True God - that he completely forgets his own ego and desires, he is praying. The primary task of the schoolteacher is to teach children, in a secular context, the technique of prayer.

Who on earth invented the silly convention that it is boring or impolite to talk shop? Nothing is more interesting to listen to, especially if the shop is not one's own.

A writer is a maker, not a man of action: his private life is of no concern to anybody but himself, his family and his friends.

A poor American feels guilty at being poor, but less guilty than an American rentier who has inherited wealth but is doing nothingto increase it; what can the latter do but take to drink and psychoanalysis?

The true men of action in our time, those who transform the world, are not the politicians and statesmen, but the scientists