Great Throughts Treasury

"The moment you cheat for the sake of beauty, you know you're an artist."

"Friendship is inexplicable, it should not be explained if one doesn't want to kill it."

"The poet's expression of joy conceals his despair at not having found the reality of joy."

"What is called a sincere work is one that is endowed with enough strength to give reality to an illusion."

"Man is a venerating animal. He venerates as easily as he purges himself. When they take away from him the gods of his fathers, he looks for others abroad."

"Cubism is ... a picture for its own sake. Literary Cubism does the same thing in literature, using reality merely as a means and not as an end."

"We don’t know very well those we love But I understand them fairly well. Being all these people myself I who am however but a baboon. "