A philosophy is characterized more by the formulation of its problem than by its solution of them.

The seeds of civilization are in every culture, but it is city life that brings them to fruition.

Most new discoveries are suddenly-seen things that were always there. A new idea is a light that illuminates presences which simply had no form before the light fell on them.

The first impression of a work of art is its otherness from reality.

The Past, being in the mode of memory, is closed, inalienable, and irreparable.

Fire is a natural symbol of life and passion, though it is the one element in which nothing can actually live.

The secret of 'fusion' is the fact that the artist's eye sees in nature... an inexhaustible wealth of tension, rhythms, continuities, and contrasts which can be rendered in line and color.

Music is the tonal analogue of emotive life.

The high intellectual value of images, however, lies in the fact that they usually, and perhaps always, fit more than one actual experience.

If a work of art is a projection of feeling, its kinship with organic nature will emerge, no matter through how many transformations, logically and inevitably.

The fairytale is irresponsible; it is frankly imaginary, and its purpose is to gratify wishes, as a dream doth flatter.

If someone proved to me that Christ is outside the truth and that in reality the truth were outside of Christ, then I should prefer to remain with Christ rather than with the truth.

The advantage of doing one's praising to oneself is that one can lay it on so thick and exactly in the right places.

There is, in fact, nothing about religious opinions that entitles them to any more respect than other opinions get. On the contrary, they tend to be noticeably silly.

I would say I'm waiting for, I guess, designers to open up their vision.

Listening to nature's operating instructions.

It's hard to get movie studios to pay a lot of money for movies that don't have robots or explosions.

Infinite striving to be the best is man's duty; it is its own reward. Everything else is in God's hands.

I'm very organized and tidy in my home life and I generally do something myself rather than farm it out to somebody else. I don't have an assistant or anything because I think I can do it myself.

I would, however, question the implication that there is some novelty in this beyond modalities [of Mikhail Bakunin], which naturally change as institutions change and develop.

History, which interprets the past to understand the present and confront the future is the least rewarding discipline for a dying species.