Quote collection
441 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"The wallpaper with which the men of science have covered the world of reality is falling to tatters. The grand whorehouse which they have made of life requires no decoration; it is essential that only the drains function adequately. Beauty, that feline beauty that has us by the balls in America, is finished."
"The world itself is pregnant with failure, is the perfect manifestation of imperfection, of the consciousness of failure."
"That we cannot rise equal to situations when we are in them — that is the tragedy of life."
"When into the womb of time everything is again withdrawn chaos will be restored and chaos is the score upon which reality is written."
"There are moments when the elixir of life rises to such over−brimming splendor that the soul spills over. In the seraphic smile of the Madonnas the soul is seen to flood the psyche. The moon of the face becomes full; the equation is perfect. A minute, a half−minute, a second later, the miracle has passed. Something intangible , something inexplicable, was given out-and received."
"France may one day exist no more, but the Dordogne will live on just as dreams live on and nourish the souls of men."
"The word civilization to my mind is coupled with death. When I use the word, I see civilization as a crippling, thwarting thing, a stultifying thing. For me it was always so. I don't believe in the golden ages, you see... civilization is the arteriosclerosis of culture."
"Life's wildest moment---she kneels on the sidewalk. Everything else she does is lies, lies."
"I like the one about the little soulworms that fly out of the nest for the resurrection."
"You start out with the sublime and you end up in an alley jerking away for dear life."
"Perhaps I have not lined his portrait too clearly. But if he exists, if only for the reason that I have imagined him to be. He came from the blue and returns to the blue. He has not perished, he is not lost. Neither will he be forgotten."
"The vast difference between astrology and other sciences, if I may put it thus, is that astrology deals not with facts but with profundities. The solid ground on which the scientist pretends to rest gives way, in astrology, to imponderables."
"Until it is kindled by a spirit as flamingly alive as the one which gave it birth a book is dead to us. Words divested of their magic are but dead hieroglyphs."
"You must be life for me to the very end," so he writes. "That is the only way in which to sustain my idea of you. Because you have gotten, as you see, tied up with something so vital to me, I do not think I shall ever shake you off. Nor do I wish to. I want you to live more vitally every day, as I am dead. That is why, when I speak of you to others, I am just a bit ashamed. It's hard to talk of one's self so intimately"
"The smile was so painfully swift and fleeting that it was like the flash of a knife."
"I don't know whether you've ever had a woman eat an apple while you were doing it. Well, you can imagine how that affects you."
"To know Paris is to know a great deal."
"There is nothing in itself which is wrong or evil not even murder."
"Men are not suffering from the lack of good literature, good art, good theatre, good music, but from that which has made it impossible for these to become manifest. In short, they are suffering from the silent shameful conspiracy (the more shameful since it is unacknowledged) which has bound them together as enemies of art and artists."
"The loss of sex polarity is part and parcel of the larger disintegration, the reflex of the soul's death, and coincident with the disappearance of great men, great deeds, great causes, great wars, etc."