“Genius is the capacity for productive reaction against one’s training.”

I am only a picture-taster, the way others are wine-or tea-tasters.

The average European does not seem to feel free until he succeeds in enslaving and oppressing others.

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.

I like any reaction I can get with my music.

Every good work has to face opposition, and the reaction of the opposition offered always helps the work.

No matter what everybody says, ultimately these things can harm us only by the way we react to them.

I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 96% how I react to it.

Action and reaction are equal and opposite.

We have become indifferent to content, and react, not even to form, but to technique, to technical efficiency itself.

I don’t think anyone ever gets over the surprise of how differently one audience’s reaction is from another.

The whole thing of life and all the answers to everything are in one divine law, Karma action and reaction.