There are said to be creative pauses, pauses that are as good as death, empty and dead as death itself. And in these awful pauses the evolutionary change takes place.
Just throw away all that computerized shit listing all human data. No one knows anything about human beings. You have to love the people because they always lose.
I never realized how mediocre the world was until I got involved with some of its supposedly top people.
The gulf between knowledge and truth is infinite.
A lot of us are looking for fathers. Mine was physically not there. Most people’s are not there mentally and physically, like always at the office or busy with other things. So all these leaders . . . are all substitute fathers, whether they be religious or political . . . Any male image is a father figure. There’s nothing wrong with it until you give them the right to give you sort of a recipe for your life. What happens is somebody comes along with a good piece of truth. Instead of the truth being looked at, the person who brought it is looked at. The messenger is worshipped, instead of the message. So there would be Christianity, Mohammedanism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Marxism, Maoism — everything — it is always about a person and never about what he says.
Visible affection, even more than law, is the health of civilization.
I have met on the street a very poor man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat was out at the elbows, the water passed through his shoes, and the stars through his soul.
A low self-love in the parent desires that his child should repeat his character and fortune. I suffer whenever I see that common sight of a parent or senior imposing his opinion and way of thinking and being on a young soul to which he is totally unfit. Cannot we let people be themselves, and enjoy life in their own way? You are trying to make another you. One’s enough.
Joy is not in things; it is in us.
Nothing will change the fact that I cannot produce the least thing without absolute solitude.
The difference between most people and myself is that for me the “dividing walls” are transparent.
Creation was given to men as a clean window through which the light of God could shine into men’s souls. Sun and moon, night and day, rain, sea, the crops, the flowering tree, all these things were transparent. They spoke to man not of themselves but only of Him who made them. Nature was symbolic. But the progressive degradation of man after the fall led the Gentiles further and further from this truth. Nature became opaque.
The greatest part of mankind have no other reason for their opinions than that they are in fashion.
As for conforming outwardly, and living your own life inwardly, I do not think much of that.
Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo.
One stands perplexed and wonders whether one should use force or humble love. Always decide to use humble love! If you resolve on that once and for all, you may subdue the whole world.