We should read to give our souls a chance to luxuriate.
There is no salvation in becoming adapted to a world which is crazy.
Los Angeles gives one the feeling of the future more strongly than any city I know of. A bad future, too, like something out of Fritz Lang's feeble imagination.
What distinguishes the majority of men from the few is their ability to act according to their beliefs.
One's destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things.
Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such.
What is not in the open street is false, derived, that is to say, literature.
We have two American flags always: one for the rich and one for the poor. When the rich fly it means that things are under control; when the poor fly it means danger, revolution, anarchy.
Honest criticism means nothing: what one wants is unrestrained passion, fire for fire.
The concert is a polite form of self induced torture.
To live without killing is a thought which could electrify the world, if men were only capable of staying awake long enough to let the idea soak in.
There is nothing strange about fear: no matter in what guise it presents itself it is something with which we are all so familiar that when a man appears who is without it we are at once enslaved by him.
Art is only a means to life, to the life more abundant. It is not in itself the life more abundant. It merely points the way, something which is overlooked not only by the public, but very often by the artist himself. In becoming an end it defeats itself.
The man who is forever disturbed about the condition of humanity either has no problems of his own or has refused to face them.
In expanding the field of knowledge we but increase the horizon of ignorance.
No matter how vast, how total, the failure of man here on earth, the work of man will be resumed elsewhere. War leaders talk of resuming operations on this front and that, but man's front embraces the whole universe.
The moment one gives close attention to any thing, even a blade of grass it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.
Confusion is a word we have invented for an order which is not understood.
It does me good to write a letter which is not a response to a demand, a gratuitous letter, so to speak, which has accumulated in me like the waters of a reservoir.
It isn't the oceans which cut us off from the world - it's the American way of looking at things.
The real leader has no need to lead - he is content to point the way.
Life has to be given a meaning because of the obvious fact that it has no meaning.
Life is constantly providing us with new funds, new resources, even when we are reduced to immobility. In life's ledger there is no such thing as frozen assets.
Sin, guilt, neurosis; they are one and the same, the fruit of the tree of knowledge.
No man is great enough or wise enough for any of us to surrender our destiny to. The only way in which anyone can lead us is to restore to us the belief in our own guidance.
The tragedy of it is that nobody sees the look of desperation on my face. Thousands and thousands of us, and we're passing one another without a look of recognition.
If men cease to believe that they will one day become gods then they will surely become worms.
Madness is tonic and invigorating. It makes the sane more sane. The only ones who are unable to profit by it are the insane.
Whatever there be of progress in life comes not through adaptation but through daring.
When one is trying to do something beyond his known powers it is useless to seek the approval of friends. Friends are at their best in moments of defeat.
Instead of asking 'How much damage will the work in question bring about?' why not ask 'How much good? How much joy?'
The worst sin that can be committed against the artist is to take him at his word, to see in his work a fulfillment instead of an horizon.
The one thing we can never get enough of is love. And the one thing we never give enough is love.
The ordinary man is involved in action, the hero acts. An immense difference.
Our own physical body possesses a wisdom which we who inhabit the body lack. We give it orders which make no sense.
The only thing we never get enough of is love; and the only thing we never give enough of is love.