Anyone who is too lazy to master the comparatively small glossary necessary to understand Chaucer deserves to be shut out from the reading of good books forever.
Our own consciousness is incapable of having produce the universe. God, therefore, exists. That is to say, there is no reason for not applying the term God, Theos, to the intimate essence.
Usura slayeth the child in the womb It stayeth the young man’s courting It hath brought palsey to bed, lyeth between the young bride and her bridegroom.
As for literature It gives no man a sinecure. And no one knows, at sight, a masterpiece. And give up verse, my boy, There’s nothing in it.
Rhythm is form cut into time.
Poetry is about as much a ‘criticism of life’ as red-hot iron is a criticism of fire.
The what is so much more important than how.
Every great change is simple.
What matters most is not the idea, but the capacity to believe in it completely.
Almost any fool can paint an academy picture, and any imbecile can shoot off a Kodak.
To say that a state cannot pursue its aims because there is no money, is like saying that an engineer cannot build roads, because there are no kilometers.
Genius is the capacity to see ten things where the ordinary man sees one, and the man of talent sees two or three, plus the ability to register that multiple perception in the material of his art.
Technique is the test of sincerity.
There is natural ignorance and there is artificial ignorance. I should say at the present moment the artificial ignorance is about eighty-five per cent.
It would be about as easy for an American to become a Chinaman or a Hindoo as for him to acquire an Englishness or a Frenchness or a European-ness that is more than half skin deep.
Bureaucrats are a pox. They are supposed to be necessary. Certain chemicals in the body are supposed to be necessary to life, but cause death the moment they increase beyond a suitable limit.
The rustling of the silk is discontinued, Dust drifts over the courtyard, There is not sound of footfall, and the leaves Scurry into heaps and lie still, And she the rejoicer of the heart is beneath them: A wet leaf that clings to the threshold.
Haie! Haie! These were the swift to harry; These the keen-scented; These were the souls of blood. Slow on the leash, pallid the leash-men!
Yet the companions of the Muses will keep their collective nose in my books And weary with historical data, they will turn to my dance tune.
I once saw a small child go to an electric light switch as say, Mamma, can I open the light? She was using the age-old language of exploration, the language of art.