“International affairs will be placed on a better footing when it is understood that there is no way of punishing a people for the crimes of its rulers.”

Life has taught me that it is not for our faults that we are disliked and even hated, but for our qualities.

Not what man knows but what man feels, concerns art. All else is science.

The artist, depicting man disdainful of the storm and stress of life, is no less reconciling and healing than the poet who, while endowing Nature and Humanity, rejoices in its measureless superiority to human passions and human sorrows.

Miracles happen to those who believe in them. Otherwise why does not the Virgin Mary appear to Lamaists, Mohammedans, or Hindus who have never heard of her.

From childhood on I have had the dream of life lived as a sacrament… the dream implied taking life ritually as something holy.

I would willingly stand at street corners, hat in hand, begging passerby to drop their unused minutes into it.

Art is mind and heart and touch as much and more than it is mere instrument, technique – without which however it cannot exist at all.

One can repent even of having repented.

You can parody and make fun of almost anything, but that does not turn the universe into a caricature.

I wonder whether art has a higher function than to make me feel, appreciate, and enjoy natural objects for their art value?

It makes me happy to encounter goodness, love of work, humane intelligence, and people no matter at what kind of job, be it ever so humble, or ever so exalted, who do it well and con amore.

Who will free me from hurry, flurry, the feeling of a crowd pushing behind me, of being hustled and crushed?

I would I could stand on a busy corner, hat in hand, and beg people to throw me all their wasted hours.

There was time for work, for play, for love, the confidence that if a task was not done at the appointed time, I easily could fit it into another hour. I used to take leisure for granted, as I did time itself.

In figure painting, the type of all painting, I have endeavoured to set forth that the principal if not sole source of life enchantments are Tactile Values, Movement and Space Composition.

Psychoanalysts are not occupied with the minds of their patients; they do not believe in the mind but in a cerebral intestine.

It is frequently a misfortune to have very brilliant men in charge of affairs. They expect too much of ordinary men.

War isn’t declared in the name of God; it is a human affair entirely.

The ordinary literary man, even though he be an eminent historian, is ill-fitted to be a mentor in affairs of government. For… things are for the most part very simple in books, and in practical life very complex.

A man’s dying is more the survivors’ affair than his own.

People are hurt in love affairs and never recover, more than a boxing match.

Politics: A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.

There is no love affair held in these hands. I am reminded of this time and again.

Future. That period of time in which our affairs prosper, our friends are true and our happiness is assured.