Happiness is in the imagination. What we perform, is always inferior to what we imagine.–Cyril Connolly, The Unquiet Grave
You can do anything in this world if you are prepared to take the consequences.–W. Somerset Maugham, The Circle
Art attempts to find in the universe, in matter as well as in the facts of life, what is fundamental, enduring, essential.–Saul Bellow, “Nobel Prize Speech”
Recognizableness is an artistic quality which most people find profoundly thrilling.–Aldous Huxley, “Music at Night”
Art enlarges by admitting us to the inner life of others.–Walter Lippmann, A Preface to Politics
Half of art is knowing when to stop.–Arthur William Radford
A work of art is good if it is has sprung from necessity.–Rainer Maria Rilke, “Letter to a Young Poet”
The proper study of mankind is books.–Aldous Huxley, Crome Yellow
Civilization is an exercise in self-restraint.–W.B. Yeats
Verbal communication about music is impossible, except among musicians.–Virgil Thompson, The State of Music
The aim of education is the knowledge not of facts, but of values.–W.R. Inge, The Church in the World
Genius is talent provided with ideals.–W. Somerset Maugham, A Writer’s Notebook
Impropriety is the soul of wit.–W. Somerset Maugham, A Writer’s Notebook
Men die but an idea does not.–Alan Jay Lerner, The Street Where I Live
Imagination and fiction make up more than three quarters of our real life.–Simone Weil, Gravity and Grouse
Nothing is so exhausting as indecision, and nothing is so futile.–Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness
The limits of language stand for the limits of my world.–Ludwig Wittgenstein, quoted Harry Zohn, Karl Kraus
Literature is not about something: it is the thing itself, the quiddity.–Vladimir Nabokov, Lectures on Literature
In memory everything seems to happen to music.–Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie
Music is the best means of digesting time.–W.H. Auden, quoted Robert Craft, Stravinsky: The Chronicle of a Friendship
Poetry is a perfectly reasonable means of overcoming chaos.–I. A. Richards, Science and Poetry
Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness.–George Santayana, Little Essays
Human kind/Cannot bear much reality.–T.S. Eliot, Burnt Norton
Most of one’s life is a prolonged effort to avoid thinking.–Aldous Huxley, “Green Tunnels”