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We do not learn only from great minds; we learn from everyone, if only we observe and inquire. I received my greatest lesson in aesthetics from an old man in an Athenian ‘taverna.’ Night after night he sat alone at the same table, drinking his wine with precisely the same movements. I finally asked him why he did this, and he said, “Young man, I first look at my glass to please my eyes, then I take it in my hand to please my hand, then I bring it to my nose to please my nostrils, and I am just about to bring it to my lips when I hear a small voice in my ears, ‘How about me?’ So I tap my glass on the table before I drink from it. I thus please all five senses.”

C.A. Doxiadis

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.

D.H. Lawrence

There’s nothing wrong with the world. What’s wrong is our way of looking at it.

Henry Miller, Big Sur, and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch

O Lord, give me chastity and continency, but not yet.

St. Augustine

A poet looks at the world as a man looks at a woman.

Wallace Stevens

I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am.

Sylvia Plath

We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But if that drop was not in the ocean, I think the ocean would be less because of that missing drop. I do not agree with the big way of doing things. To us what matters is the individual. To get to love the person we must come in close contact with him. If we wait till we get the numbers, then we will be lost in the numbers. And we will never be able to show that love and respect for the person. I believe in person to person; every person is Christ for me, and since there is only one Jesus, that person is the one person in the world at that moment.

Mother Teresa

I don’t want you to follow me or anyone else. I would not lead you into the promised land if I could, because if I could lead you in, somebody else would lead you out.

Eugene Debs

What does “car” mean? A car in a showroom, a car heading straight toward me, a car needing constant repair, all have such isolated meanings that the name “car” cannot be said to stand for any one thing. That too is true of Scott or John or Gayle. God is in them only when God is in my mind. Only love can see steadily, consistently. Love makes one thing of all that it sees.

Hugh Prather, There is a Place Where You Are Not Alone

The necessary premise is that a man is somehow more than his “characteristics,” all the emotions, strivings, tastes and constructions which it pleases him to call “My Life.” We have ground to hope that a Life is something more than a cloud of particles, mere facticity. Go through what is comprehensible and you conclude that only the incomprehensible gives any light.

Saul Bellow, Herzog