California is a queer place in a way, it has turned its back on the world, and looks into the void Pacific. It is absolutely selfish, very empty, but not false, and at least, not full of false effort.
Nobody can have the soul of me. My mother has had, and nobody can have it again. Nobody can come into my very self again, and breathe me like an atmosphere.
Myth is an attempt to narrate a whole human experience, of which the purpose is too deep, going too deep in the blood and soul, for mental explanation or description.
It is not woman who claims the highest in man. It is a man’s own religious soul that drives him on beyond women, to his supreme activity. For his highest, man is responsible to God alone.
The only history is a mere question of one’s struggle inside oneself. But that is the joy of it. One need neither discover Americas nor conquer nations, and yet one has as great a work as Columbus or Alexander, to do.
The history of our era is the nauseating and repulsive history of the crucifixion of the procreative body for the glorification ofthe spirit.
Towns oftener swamp one than carry one out onto the big ocean of life.
No form of love is wrong, so long as it is love, and you yourself honour what you are doing. Love has an extraordinary variety of forms! And that is all that there is in life, it seems to me.
There is no evolving, only unfolding. The lily is in the bit of dust which is its beginning, lily and nothing but lily: and the lily in blossom is a ne plus ultra: there is no evolving beyond.
There is no such thing as liberty. You only change one sort of domination for another. All we can do is to choose our master.
Whatever men you take, keep the idea of man intact: let your soul wait whether your body does or not.
The only justice is to follow the sincere intuition of the soul, angry or gentle. Anger is just, and pity is just, but judgement is never just.
As we all know, too much of any divine thing is destruction.
People always make war when they say they love peace.
Life and love are life and love, a bunch of violets is a bunch of violets, and to drag in the idea of a point is to ruin everything. Live and let live, love and let love, flower and fade, and follow the natural curve, which flows on, pointless.
Europe is, perhaps, the least worn-out of the continents, because it is the most lived in. A place that is lived in lives.
Be a good animal, true to your animal instincts.
You don’t learn algebra with your blessed soul. Can’t you look at it with your clear simple wits?
But I like the feel of men on things, while they’re alive. There’s a feel of men about trucks, because they’ve been handled with men’s hands, all of them.
My soul is my great asset and my great misfortune.