“France, famed in all great arts, in none supreme.”

Now the great winds shoreward blow Now the salt tides seaward flow Now the wild white horses play Champ and chafe and toss in the spray.

Ah! two desires toss about The poet’s feverish blood; One drives him to the world without, And one to solitude.

How many minds–almost all the great ones–were formed in secrecy and solitude!

Weep bitterly over the dead, for he is worthy, and then comfort thyself; drive heaviness away: thou shall not do him good, but hurt thyself.

All the live murmur of a summer’s day.

And see all sights from pole to pole, And glance, and nod, and hustle by; And never once possess our soul Before we die.

Be neither saint nor sophist-led, but be a man.

Culture looks beyond machinery, culture hates hatred; culture has one great passion, the passion for sweetness and light.

It is a very great thing to be able to think as you like; but, after all, an important question remains: what you think.

Culture is properly described as the love of perfection; it is a study of perfection.

Below the surface stream, shallow and light, Of what we say and feel below the stream, As light, of what we think we feel, there flows With noiseless current, strong, obscure and deep, The central stream of what we feel indeed.

Life is not having and getting, but being and becoming

If one were searching for the best means to efface and kill in a whole nation the discipline of self-respect, the feeling for what is elevated, he could do no better than take the American newspapers.

It is almost impossible to exaggerate the proneness of the human mind to take miracles as evidence, and to seek for miracles as evidence.

Ah, love, let us be true To one another!

Use your gifts faithfully, and they shall be enlarged; practice what you know, and you shall attain to higher knowledge.

Philosophy, art, and science are not the mental objects of an objectified brain but the three aspects under which the brain becomes subject.

Teaching is an art and a profession requiring years of training.

Art for me…is a negation of society, an affirmation of the individual, outside of all the rules and all the demands of society.

The art of being happy lies in the power of extracting happiness from common things.

It is my art. I am better at it than I ever was. And I will do it as long as I can. When you reach a certain age you can slough off what is unnecessary and concentrate on what is. And why not?

Art is the funnel, as it were, through which spirit is poured into life.

If knowing the truth is sufficient for you, then practice the art of philosophy. If only living the truth will suffice, then practice the art of love through your mind, your emotions, and your body.

When I was a kid, I was told rock n’ roll wasn’t music. It wasn’t art. Queen was my proof, my evidence, that these people were wrong – and they meant everything to me.