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There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories.

This is. And thou art. There is no safety. There is no end. The word must be heard in silence. There must be darkness to see the stars. The dance is always danced above the hollow place, above the terrible abyss.

There is nothing at all that can be talked about adequately, and the whole art of poetry is to say what can't be said.

If we cling to belief in God, we cannot likewise have faith, since faith is not clinging but letting go.

Belief is the wound that knowledge heals.

You and I are all as much continuous with the physical universe as a wave is continuous with the ocean.

“Truth is a matter of the imagination.

Children know perfectly well that unicorns aren’t real, but they also know that books about unicorns, if they are good books, are true books.

Life is like music for its own sake. We are living in an eternal now, and when we listen to music we are not listening to the past, we are not listening to the future, we are listening to an expanded present.

It is very hard for evil to take hold of the unconsenting soul.

You are a function of what the whole universe is doing in the same way that a wave is a function of what the whole ocean is doing.

To learn which questions are unanswerable, and not to answer them: this skill is most needful in times of stress and darkness.

A person with a mind is bound to be filled with conceptions. These conceptions prevent him from knowing things directly, so a person with a mind shall never really know.

Sometimes I'd yell questions at the rocks and trees, and across gorges, or yodel - "What is the meaning of the void?" The answer was perfect silence, so I knew.

This implies that the art of life is more like navigation than warfare, for what is important is to understand the winds, the tides, the currents, the seasons, and the principles of growth and decay, so that one's actions may use them and not fight them.

Of several bodies all equally larger and distant, that most brightly illuminated will appear to the eye nearest and largest.

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

When you are painting you should take a flat mirror and often look at your work within it, and it will then be seen in reverse, and will appear to be by the hand of some other master, and you will be better able to judge of its faults than in any other way.

I would venture to affirm that a man cannot attain excellence if he satisfy the ignorant and not those of his own craft, and if he be not ‘singular’ or ‘distant,’ or whatever you like to call him.

The eye encompasses the beauty of the whole world.

He who despises painting has no love for the philosophy in nature.

The good painter must paint two things: a person and the essence of his soul.

The good painter must paint two things: a person and the essence of his soul.

My works are the issue of simple and plain experience which is the true mistress.