Imitate the magnificent trees that speak no word of their rapture, but only breathe largely the luminous breeze.
My wife has a beastly habit of comparing poetry – all literature in fact – to the droppings of the goats among the rocks – mere excreta that fertilises the ground it falls on.
Who knows the power that Saturn has over us, or Venus? But it is a vital power, rippling exquisitely through us all the time.
Humanity is less, far less than the individual, because the individual may sometimes be capable of truth, and humanity is a tree of lies.
I think societal instinct much deeper than sex instinct – and societal repression much more devastating.
It is no good casting out devils. They belong to us, we must accept them and be at peace with them.
Censors are dead men set up to judge between life and death. For no live, sunny man would be a censor, he’d just laugh.
The true self is not aware that it is a self. A bird, as it sings, sings itself. But not according to a picture. It has no idea of itself.
When love enters, the whole spiritual constitution of a man changes, is filled with the Holy Ghost, and almost his form is altered.
So long as you don’t feel life’s paltry and a miserable business, the rest doesn’t matter, happiness or unhappiness.
There is no smooth road into the future: but we go round, or scramble over the obstacles.
A man will part with anything so long as he’s drunk, and you’re drunk with him.
How can any man be free without a soul of his own, that he believes in and won’t sell at any price?
The only reality was nothingness, and over it a hypocrisy of words.
The peasants of Sicily, who have kept their own wheat and make their own natural brown bread, ah, it is amazing how fresh and sweet and clean their loaf seems, so perfumed, as home-made bread used all to be before the war.
Eat and carouse with Bacchus, or munch dry bread with Jesus, but don’t sit down without one of the gods.
Yea, Paris is a festive ton – a festive Ton for all! Skate o’er on joy – Thin crust of gilded, polished joy! What matters it if Hell’s beneath?
In America the cohesion was a matter of choice and will. But in Europe it was organic.
Money is the seal and stamp of success.
Love’s a dog in a manger.