The real problem is deflation. That is the opposite of inflation but equally serious to the borrower.
When it meows, one scarcely hears it. . . It has not the need of words to speak the lengthiest phraseologies.
To dream magnificently is not a gift given to all men, and even for those who possess it, it runs a strong risk of being progressively diminished by the ever-growing dissipation of modern life and by the restlessness engendered by material progress. The ability to dream is a divine and mysterious ability; because it is through dreams that man communicates with the shadowy world which surrounds him. But this power needs solitude to develop freely; the more one concentrates, the more one is likely to dream fully, deeply.
Strangeness is a necessary ingredient in beauty.
You have to be always drunk. That's all there is to it-it's the only way. So as not to feel the horrible burden of time that breaks your back and bends you to the earth, you have to be continually drunk. But on what? Wine, poetry or virtue, as you wish. But be drunk.
Nothing can be done except little by little.
To say the word Romanticism is to say modern art - that is, intimacy, spirituality, color, aspiration towards the infinite, expressed by every means available to the arts.
The machine conceals the machinations.
The science of constructing a commonwealth or renovating it, or reforming it, is. . . not to be taught a priori. . . That which in the first instance is prejudicial may be excellent in its remoter operation, and its excellence may rise even from the ill effects it produces in the beginning. The reverse also happens; and very plausible schemes, with very pleasing commencements, have often shameful and lamentable conclusions.
Heaven would be hell to me without Christ.
That's what my mother doesn't understand about my lipstick and dark clothes. I don't wear tattoos to freak her out; I wear them because I have to. It's me.