“Soft as the earth is mankind and both need to be altered.”

“Looking up at the stars, I know quite wellThat, for all they care, I can go to hell,But on earth indifference is the leastWe have to dread from man or beast.”

“You need not see what someone is doing to know if it is his vocation, you have only to watch his eyes: a cook mixing a sauce, as surgeon making a primary incision, a clerk completing a bill of lading, wear that same rapt expression, forgetting themselves in a function. How beautiful it is, that eye-on-the-object look.”

“The commonest ivory tower is that of the average man, the state of passivity towards experience.”

“Few people take an interest in Iceland, but in those few the interest is passionate.”

“The windiest militant trashImportant Persons shoutIs not so crude as our wish:What mad Nijinsky wrote About DiaghilevIs true of the normal heart;For the error bred in the boneOf each woman and each manCraves what it cannot have;Not universal loveBut to be loved alone.”

“I and the public knowWhat all schoolchildren learn,Those to whom evil is doneDo evil in return.”