Marco Polo tells the tale of The Old Man in the Mountains and how he recruits new members to his Band of Assassins by means of drugs, beautiful women, lush gardens, and religious promises. The unfortunate thing about this world is that the good habits are much easier to give up than the bad ones.
A state of reverie does not avoid reality, it accedes to reality.
The essential element of love is a belief in its own eternity.
The good traveler has the gift of surprise.
I’m only twenty-five. If I’ve made a mistake I have time to correct it.
The great trues are too important to be new.
It needs a good deal of philosophy not to be mortified by the thought of persons who have voluntarily abandoned everything that for the most of us makes life worth living and are devoid of envy of what they have missed. I have never made up my mind whether they are fools or wise men.
A good story is obviously a difficult thing to invent, but its difficulty is a poor reason for despising it.
The future will one day be the present and will seem as unimportant as the present does now.
Because a man can write great works he is none the less a man.
Perfect is determined in shortened measures of time, not over long periods of time or lifetimes. It would be unnatural.
I never spend more than one hour in a gallery. That is as long as one’s power of appreciation persists.
I’m not only my spirit buy my body, and who can decide how much I, my individual self, am conditioned by the accident of my body? Would Byron have been Byron but for his club foot, or Dostoyevsky Dostoyevsky without his epilepsy?
D’you call life a bad job? Never! We’ve had our ups and downs, we’ve had our struggles, we’ve always been poor, but it’s been worth it, ay, worth it a hundred times I say when I look round at my children.
The average American can get into the kingdom of heaven much more easily than he can get into the Boulevard St. Germain.
A God that can be understood is no God. Who can explain the Infinite in words?
Nothing more predisposes someone in our favour than to let him rob you a little.
I am sick of this way of life. The weariness and sadness of old age make it intolerable. I have walked with death in hand, and death’s own hand is warmer than my own. I don’t wish to live any longer.
It was such a beautiful day I decided to stay in bed.
What mean and cruel things men do for the love of God.