The way to perfection is through a series of disgusts

All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music.

Books are a refuge, a sort of cloistral refuge, from the vulgarities of the actual world.

To burn always with this hard, gem-like flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life.

Art comes to you proposing frankly to give nothing but the highest quality to your moments as they pass.

Not the fruit of experience, but experience itself, is the end.

At first sight experience seems to bury us under a flood of external objects, pressing upon us with a sharp and importunate reality, calling us out of ourselves in a thousand forms of action.

Philosophical theories or ideas, as points of view, instruments of criticism, may help us to gather up what might otherwise pass unregarded by us.

Great passions may give us a quickened sense of life, ecstasy and sorrow of love, the various forms of enthusiastic activity, disinterested or otherwise, which comes naturally to many of us.

To know when one's self is interested, is the first condition of interesting other people.

Many attempts have been made by writers on art and poetry to define beauty in the abstract, to express it in the most general terms, to find some universal formula for it.

You can’t give your heart to a wild thing.

There is nothing that's off limits. If people think something is off limits, I make it my business to go make a joke about it; that's my job.

Silence is a true friend who never betrays.

any criticism heard secondhand sounds worse than it would face to face. Words spoken out of our presence strike us as more powerful, just as people we know only by reputation seem larger than life.

The nagual gives you the unknown; it gives you reality; it leads you to the totality of yourself.

I've never stayed awake at night over a chance I took that failed, but I've stayed awake over chances I didn't take.

We are not that flash, me or the missus. In fact, we are quite low-maintenance.

To awaken spiritual unity, and to spread to others the love that is our inherent nature, is the true goal of human life.

Our focus should be on developmental dimensions of atomic science with a special outreach to India's youth.

‎Living in the moment means letting go of the past and not waiting for the future. It means living your life consciously, aware that each moment you breathe is a gift.