“We are, all of us, creatures of habit, and when the seeeming necessity for schooling ourselves in new ways ceases to exist, we fall naturally and easily into the manner and customs which long usage has implanted ineradicably within us.”

“So long as one remains in the same condition, the inclinations which result from habit and are the least natural to us can be kept; but as soon as the situation changes, habit ceases and the natural returns. Education is certainly only habit. Now are there not people who forget and lose their education? Others who keep it? Where does this difference come from? If the name nature were limited to habits conformable to nature, we would spare ourselves this garble!”

“Our vanity, our passions, our spirit of imitation, our abstract intelligence, our habits have long been at work, and it is the task of art to undo this work of theirs, making us travel back in the direction from which we have come to the depths where what has really existed lies unknown within us.”

“Everything that happens where we live happens in us. Everything that ceases in what we see ceases in us. Everything that has been, if we saw it when it was, was taken from us when it went away.”

“It is human nature. If we surround ourselves with evil, even evil becomes good to us. If we are not careful, that natural light witin us all that teaches us the difference between the two can be snuffed out completely. Even the best of people can fall.”

“The spider's lesson is never to be greedy. It shows that objects of necessity can be objects of beauty and art as well. The spider teaches us that we can be too easily enraptured with ourselves.”