Quotes

Lovers need to know how to lose themselves and then how to find themselves again.

Pitiful is the person who is afraid of taking risks.

Seek to live. Remembrance is for the old.

The gods throw the dice, freeing love from its cage. And love can create or destroy — depending on the direction of the wind when it is set free.

We must never forget that spiritual experience is above all a practical experience of love. And with love, there are no rules.

Never be ashamed,’ he said. ‘Accept what life offers you and try to drink from every cup. All wines should be tasted; some should only be sipped, but with others, drink the whole bottle.’ ‘How will I know which is which?’ ‘By the taste. You can only know a good wine if you have first tasted a bad one.’

Private property ... has led Individualism entirely astray. It has made gain not growth its aim.

The note of the perfect personality is not rebellion, but peace.

Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.

The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing.

A man who does not think for himself does not think at all.

They are always asking a writer why he does not write like somebody else, or a painter why he does not paint like somebody else, quite oblivious of the fact that if either of them did anything of the kind he would cease to be an artist.

Art is Individualism, and Individualism is a disturbing and disintegrating force. Therein lies its immense value. For what it seeks to disturb is monotony of type, slavery of custom, tyranny of habit, and the reduction of man to the level of a machine.

The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing. Journalism, conscious of this, and having tradesman-like habits, supplies their demands.

The fact is, that civilisation requires slaves. The Greeks were quite right there. Unless there are slaves to do the ugly, horrible, uninteresting work, culture and contemplation become almost impossible. Human slavery is wrong, insecure, and demoralizing. On mechanical slavery, on the slavery of the machine, the future of the world depends.

A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing.

Pleasure is Nature’s test, her sign of approval. When man is happy, he is in harmony with himself and his environment.

Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.

The only thing that sustains one through life is the consciousness of the immense inferiority of everybody else, and this is a feeling that I have always cultivated.

All charming people, I fancy, are spoiled. It is the secret of their attraction.