“Fate and temperament are the names of a concept.”

Where children are, there is the golden age.

All power appears only in transition. Permanent power is stuff.

Life is the beginning of death. Life is for the sake of death. Death is at once the end and the beginning—at once separation and closer union of the self. Through death the reduction is complete.

I often feel, and ever more deeply I realize, that fate and character are the same conception.

Genius in general is poetic. Where genius has been active it has been poetically active. The truly moral person is a poet.

Only as far as a man is happily married to himself is he fit for married life and family life in general.

One should, when overwhelmed by the shadow of a giant, move aside and see if the colossal shadow isn’t merely that of a pygmy blocking out the sun.

Man has his being in truth–if he sacrifices truth he sacrifices himself. Whoever betrays truth betrays himself. It is not a question of lying–but of acting against one’s conviction.

Philosophy can bake no bread; but she can procure for us God, Freedom, Immortality. Which, then, is more practical, Philosophy or Economy?

Everything at a distance turns into poetry; distant mountains, distant people, distant events; all become Romantic.

Our bodies are molded rivers.

Where are we really going? Always home.

Everywhere we seek the Absolute, and always we find only things.

Every disease is a musical problem; every cure is a musical solution.

The ideal of morality has no more dangerous rival than the ideal of highest strength, of most powerful life. It is the maximum of the savage.

Friends, the soil is poor, we must sow seeds in plenty for us to garner even modest harvests.

If we see the body we live in as a temple used to engage in beautiful activities in the service of God’s children, then we recognize it as spiritual. But if we use our body for more selfish purposes, then we’re only experiencing its material conception.

The proper concepts are needed to formulate a good theory, but we need a good theory to arrive at the proper concepts.

Only the human brain can deliberately change perceptions, change patterns, invent concepts and tolerate ambiguity.

It is a long road from conception to completion.

The concept of logical thinking is selection and this is brought about by the processes of acceptance and rejection. Rejection is the basis of logical thinking.

President Obama appears to me to have elevated and implemented the artist-activist concept to the role of empowered servant-leader.

Within the universe of the extraordinary, those qualities we designate to human concepts of gender are often shared, exchanged, or even completely obliterated.

I don’t know what DVD commentaries are about. I’d like to strangle the person who came up with that concept.