A well chosen anthology is a complete dispensary of medicine 

for the more common mental disorders, 

and may be used as much for prevention as cure.

A person who doubts himself 

is like a man who would enlist in the ranks of his enemies 

and bear arms against himself. 

He makes his failure certain 

by himself being the first person to be convinced of it.

Errors of taste are very often the outward sign of a deep fault of sensibility.

Darkness is to space 

what silence is to sound, 

i.e., the interval.

It always seems impossible 

until it's done.

Whatever you are, 

be a good one.

The value and rank 

of every art 

is in proportion 

to the mental labour employed in it, 

or the mental pleasure in producing it.

Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.

It is my opinion that everything must be based on a simple idea. 

And it is my opinion that this idea, 

once we have finally discovered it, 

will be so compelling, 

so beautiful, 

that we will say to one another, 

yes, 

how could it have been any different.

The most beautiful people 

we have known 

are those who have 

known defeat, 

known suffering, 

known struggle, 

known loss, 

and have found their way out of those depths

A film is a petrified fountain of thought.

Nobody, 

I think, 

ought to read poetry, 

or look at pictures or statues, 

who cannot find a great deal more in them 

than the poet or artist has actually expressed. 

Their highest merit is suggestiveness.

As you proceed through life, 

following your own path, 

birds will shit on you. 

Don't bother to brush it off.

Getting a comedic view of your situation 

gives you spiritual distance.

Having a sense of humour saves you.

Shadow owes its birth to light.

I know but one freedom, 

and that is the freedom of the mind.

Uncritical semantics is the myth of a museum 

in which 

the exhibits are meanings 

and the words are labels. 

To switch languages is to change the labels.

The atom bombs are piling up in the factories, 

the police are prowling through the cities, 

the lies are streaming from the loudspeakers, 

but the earth is still going round the sun.

Coercion may prevent many transgressions; 

but it robs even actions which are legal of a part of their beauty.

Neither sex, 

without some fertilisation of the complementary characters of the other, 

is capable of the highest reaches of human endeavour.

The struggle alone pleases us, 

not the victory.

I haven't understood a bar of music in my life, 

but I have felt it.

Never give up, 

for that is just the place and time 

that the tide will turn.

Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; 

but make it hot by striking.

He knows not his own strength 

that has not met adversity.

A man is only as good as what he loves.

There is no harm in being sometimes wrong 

— especially if one is promptly found out.

No society can surely be flourishing and happy, 

of which the far greater part of the members 

are poor and miserable.

When the poet makes his perfect selection of a word, 

he is endowing the word with life.

Poetry is a mixture of common sense, 

which not all have, 

with an uncommon sense, 

which very few have.

A man does not know what he is saying 

until he knows what he is not saying.

Fond memory brings the light of other days around me.

All life is an experiment. 

The more experiments you make 

the better.

Every failure is a step to success.

An unfulfilled vocation drains the colour from a man's entire existence.

Originality is the one thing which unoriginal minds cannot feel the use of.

To love it too much 

is to obscure 

and not see 

what is there.

The information is in the people, 

not in your head.

Once an object has been incorporated in a picture 

it accepts a new destiny.

Truth cannot be brought down; 

rather, the individual must make the effort to ascend to it. 

You cannot bring the mountaintop to the valley. 

If you would attain to the mountaintop, 

you must pass through the valley, 

climb the steeps, 

unafraid of the dangerous precipices.

We do not know enough about 

how the present will lead into the future.

It is that range of biodiversity that we must care for

 — the whole thing — 

rather than just one or two stars.

The only freedom I care about

 is the freedom to do right; 

the freedom to do wrong 

I am ready to part with 

on the cheapest terms 

to anyone who will take it of me.

One change always leaves the way open for the establishment of others.

The enemy is anybody who's going to get you killed, 

no matter which side he's on.

The more nobly a man wills and acts, 

the more avid he becomes 

for great and sublime aims to pursue. 

He will no longer be content with family, country, 

and the remunerative aspect of his work. 

He will want wider organisations to create, 

new paths to blaze, 

causes to uphold, 

truths to discover, 

an ideal to cherish and defend.

Language is a part of our organism 

and no less complicated than it.

A lost but happy dream 

may shed its light 

upon our waking hours, 

and the whole day 

may be infected 

with the gloom 

of a dreary or sorrowful one; 

yet of neither may we be able to recover a trace.

Fashion is the science of appearance, 

and it inspires one with the desire to seem 

rather than to be.

I am no bird; 

and no net ensnares me; 

I am a free human being 

with an independent will.