The walls that fence our fields, as well as modern Rome, and not less the Parthenon itself, are all built of ruins.
Unexpected intrusions of beauty. This is what life is.
A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.
In Los Angeles all the loose objects in the country were collected, as if America had been tilted and everything that wasn't tightly screwed down had slid into Southern California.
You can spend the entire second half of your life recovering from the mistakes of the first half.
In every community there is a class of people profoundly dangerous to the rest. I don't mean the criminals. For them we have punitive sanctions. I mean the leaders. Invariably the most dangerous people seek the power. While in the parlors of indignation the right-thinking citizen brings his heart to a boil. (p. 51)
Everybody needs his memories. They keep the wolf of insignificance from the door.
There is something to this fabric of life that is beautiful. If you find the world unpleasant, I don't think that is wisdom. That is a sign of a lack of wisdom.
The price which society pays for the law of competition, like the price it pays for cheap comforts and luxuries, is great; but the advantages of this law are also greater still than its cost- for it is to this law that we owe our wonderful material development, which brings improved conditions in its train.
It is the heart which perceives God and not the reason.
Women are naturally competitive. That's what drives women to form cliques at early age.