Life and Existence

After sixty years the stern sentence of the burial service seems to have a meaning that one did not notice in former years. There begins to be something personal about it.

One cannot help using his early friends as the seaman uses the log, to mark his progress.

One cannot help using his early friends as the seaman uses the log, to mark his progress.

Failure or success seem to have been allotted to men by their stars. But they retain the power of wriggling, of fighting with their star or against it, and in the whole universe the only really interesting movement is this wriggle.

Faith, to my mind, is a stiffening process, a sort of mental starch, which ought to be applied as sparingly as possible.

No one can shed light on vices he does not have or afflictions he has never experienced.

Even though a god, I have learned to obey the times.

Even though a god, I have learned to obey the times.

Naked I came into the world, naked I shall go out of it! And a very good thing too, for it reminds me that I am naked under my shirt, whatever its colour.

Naked I came into the world, naked I shall go out of it! And a very good thing too, for it reminds me that I am naked under my shirt, whatever its colour.

Every person’s feelings have a front-door and a side-door by which they may be entered.

The emotions may be endless. The more we express them, the more we may have to express.

Wilt Thou not take the doubt of Thy children whom the time commands to try all things in the place of the unquestioning faith of earlier generations?

How True it is that our destinies are decided by nothings and that a small imprudence helped by some insignificant accident, as an acorn is fertilized by a drop of rain, may raise the trees on which perhaps we and others shall be crucified.

What once was cuddled must learn to kiss/The cold worm’s mouth. That’s all the mystery.

Most persons have died before they expire—died to all earthly longings, so that the last breath is only, as it were, the locking of the door of the already deserted mansion.

To be too conscious is an illness—a real thoroughgoing illness.

What man wants is simply independent choice, whatever that independence may cost and wherever it may lead.

In the dust where we have buried the silent races and their abominations we have buried so much of the delicate magic of life.

Certainty generally is illusion, and repose is not the destiny of man.

It is the peculiarity of the bore that he is the last person to find himself out.

Under all that we think, lives all we believe, like the ultimate veil of our spirits.

The people I respect most behave as if they were immortal and as if society was eternal.

Savagely is necessary ever}' four or five hundred years in order to bring the world back to life. Otherwise the world would die of civilization.