Though man's feeling for the other-worldly often has recourse to solitude, solitude does not foster its development; rather, it is nourished by communion, to which the church is more propitious than the cemetery.

Seldom is a Gothic head more beautiful than when broken.

If modern painters feel qualms about applying the term masterpiece to describe a work of capital importance, this is because it has come to convey a notion of perfection: a notion that leads to much confusion when applied to artists other than those who made perfection their ideal.

There is always a need for intoxication: China has opium, Islam has hashish, the West has woman.

In the realm of human destiny, the depth of man's questionings is more important than his answers.

In so far as he is a creator, the artist does not belong to a social group already moulded by a culture, but to a culture which he is by way of building up.

The present age delights in unearthing a great man's secrets; for one thing because we like to temper our admiration and also perhaps we have a vague hope of finding a clue to genius in such revelations.

The great mystery is not that we should have been thrown down here at random between the profusion of matter and that of the stars; it is that from our very prison we should draw, from our own selves, images powerful enough to deny our own nothingness.

Then I despair... I remember that all through history, the way of truth and love has always won. There have been murderers and tyrants, and for a time they can seem invincible. But in the end they always fall. Think of it always.

Surely that little pseudo-gothic church on Broadway, hidden amongst the skyscrapers, is symbolic of the age! On the whole face of the globe the civilization that has conquered it has failed to build a temple or a tomb.

Opium teaches only one thing, which is that aside from physical suffering, there is nothing real.

An art book is a museum without walls.

The attempt to force human beings to despise themselves is what I call hell.

The first duty of a leader is to make himself be loved without courting love. To be loved without 'playing up' to anyone -- even to himself.

If we cannot shape our destiny there is no such thing as witchcraft.

The world of art is not a world of immortality but of metamorphosis.

Culture is the sum of all the forms of art, of love, and of thought, which, in the coarse or centuries, have enabled man to be less enslaved.

In ceasing to subordinate creative power to any supreme value, modern art has brought home to us the presence of that creative power throughout the whole history of art.

Every great masterpiece is a purification of the world.

Communism destroys democracy. Democracy can also destroy Communism.