Were art to redeem man, it could do so only by saving him from the seriousness of life and restoring him to an unexpected boyishness.

The trend toward pure art betrays not arrogance, as is often thought, but modesty. Art that has rid itself of human pathos is a thing without consequence— just art with no other pretenses.

The metaphor is perhaps one of man’s most fruitful potentialities. Its efficacy verges on magic, and it seems a tool for creation which God forgot inside one of His creatures when He made him.

As this is the simple truth—that to live is to feel oneself lost—he who accepts it has already begun to find himself, to be on firm ground.

The world is the sum-total of our vital possibilities.

Excellence means when a man or woman asks of himself more than others do.

To be surprised, to wonder, is to begin to understand.

Life is a series of collisions with the future it is not the sum of what we have been, but what we yearn to be.

Our firmest convictions are apt to be the most suspect, they mark our limitations and our bounds.

Order is not pressure which is imposed on society from without, but an equilibrium which is set up from within.