“Thought that can merge wholly into feeling, feeling that can merge wholly into thought – these are the artist’s highest joy.”

Tolerance becomes a crime when applied to evil.

Every reasonable human being should be a moderate Socialist.

A solitary, unused to speaking of what he sees and feels, has mental experiences which are at once more intense and less articulate than those of a gregarious man.

Technology and comfort – having those, people speak of culture, but do not have it.

War is only a cowardly escape from the problems of peace.

Is not life in itself a thing of goodness, irrespective of whether the course it takes for us can be called a ‘happy’ one?

In books we never find anything but ourselves. Strangely enough, that always gives us great pleasure, and we say the author is a genius.

Yes, they are carnal, both of them, love and death, and therein lies their terror and their great magic!

He who loves the more is the inferior and must suffer.

I stand between two worlds. I am at home in neither, and I suffer in consequence. You artists call me a bourgeois, and the bourgeois try to arrest me…I don’t know which makes me feel worse.

Speech is civilization itself.

What a wonderful phenomenon it is, carefully considered, when the human eye, that jewel of organic structures, concentrates its moist brilliance on another human creature!

Animals do not admire each other. A horse does not admire its companion.

People’s behavior makes sense if you think about it in terms of their goals, needs, and motives.

He thought what a fine thing it was that people made music all over the world, even in the strangest settings – probably even on polar expeditions.

No man remains quite what he was when he recognizes himself.

The great artist is the simplifier.

What makes a song last is real content from a mind that is thinking a little bit harder about certain things. A lot of artists don’t really think that hard.

If you are born an artist, you have no choice but to fight to stay an artist.

When art critics get together they talk about Form and Structure and Meaning. When artists get together they talk about where you can buy cheap turpentine.

In every photographer there was a painter, a true artist, awaiting expression.

I do not seek. I find.

In an artist’s life, death is perhaps not the most difficult thing.

In every photographer there was a painter, a true artist, awaiting expression.