Beauty is real. I would never deny it; the appalling thing is that I forget it.

She never forgets to be kind; but her kindness is not like that of people who do not have to remember.

What do we gain and what we do we lose when we no longer talk about the Human Condition, but rather the User Experience?

But behind this psychotherapeutic need, there is probably something else, namely the ancient and perpetual metaphysical need of human beings.

De Quincey said of him that "he wanted better bread than can be made with wheat:" Lamb, that from childhood he had "hungered for eternity."

It is bad taste to yawn in front of people. When one unexpectedly has to yawn, if he rubs his forehead in an upward direction, the sensation will stop.

Anatomy tells us that muscles are two-way mechanisms; that is, a given muscle is either relaxed or contracted. It can't be partially contracted any more than a light switch can be partially off.

[O]n that fragile little sphere … all I had ever known, all I had ever loved and hated, longed for, all that I once thought had ever been and ever would be.

And olives on the point of falling: the shadow of decay gives them a peculiar beauty.

Anything you think is wrong with your body at the age of thirty-five you will be nostalgic for at the age of forty-five.

Poet, thinker, problem drinker, pill-taker, man of genius, manic depressive, intricate schemer, success story, he once wrote poems of great wit and beauty, but what had he done lately?

On the first day of the revolution he is simply a treasure, but on the day after that he ought to be shot!

That man is the noblest creature may also be inferred from the fact that no other creature has yet contested this claim.

To have Mrs Mortimer and Barbara Lake preferred to her did not wound Lucilla's pride—one can be wounded in that way only by one's equals. She thought of it with a certain mild pity and charitable contempt.

How vain painting is, exciting admiration by its resemblance to things of which we do not admire the originals!

But when it came to modern art, I was afraid that maybe the others were right, that I would never be hip or sophisticated, would never belong. I'd never know that smug sense of being of my time, being contemporary.

Most of what calls itself contemporary is built, whether it knows it or not, out of a desire to be liked.

I also reread everything he wrote. What intrigued me most about Pushkin was his Olympian detachment. His willingness to accept and express any point of view. His invariable striving for the highest, utmost objectivity. Like the moon, illuminating the way for prey and predator both.

So men's will to recovery strove against the drifting wilderness to halt and tame it; but the wilderness might slip from their hands, from their spades and trowels and measuring roads, slip darkly away from them, seeking the primeval chaos and old night which had been before Londinium was, which would be when cities were ghosts haunting the ancestral dreams of memory.

For the Jena Romantics, the abstract search for a lost world is also proposed as a viable path to regain the world.

As a reliable compass for orienting yourself in life nothing is more useful than to accustom yourself to regarding this world as a place of atonement, a sort of penal colony.

You once told me you believed in God.

The old man waved his hand. Maybe, he said. I got no reason to think he believes in me. Oh I'd like to see him for a minute if I could.

What would you say to him?

Well, I think I'd just tell him. I'd say: Wait a minute. Wait just one minute before you start in on me. Before you say anything, there's just one thing I'd like to know. And he'll say: What's that? And then I'm goin to ast him: What did you have me in that crapgame down there for anyway? I couldnt put any part of it together.

Suttree smiled. What do you think he'll say?

The ragpicker spat and wiped his mouth. I dont believe he can answer it, he said. I dont believe there is a answer.

From time to time a tiny yellow butterfly would flit past, like a little yellow leaf shed by one of the birches; and now and then one of the bleeding, tortured liege-oaks would drop an acorn, with a little flop—just to remind you, as it was, that it was leading its own serene, vegetable life, oblivious to the agony ascribed to it by the fevered fancy of man.

When at last she reached the foot of the tree, the bird took fright and flew away and she sat down suddenly on a gnarled leaf of primrose. The air was filled with scent. 'But nothing will play with you,' she thought and saw the cracks and furrows of the primrose leaves held crystal beads of dew.

His long preoccupation with the marvel and loveliness with single simple rose-leaf also created in him the strongest feeling of suspense. He might have been poised in space, a leaf himself, breathlessly held in air. He took several long, deep breaths: he felt unbearably glad to be alive.