“There is no error more absurd, and yet more rooted in the heart of man, than the belief that his sufferings will promote his spiritual safety.”

“Many a month of gloomy unconsciousness rolled over me, without date or notice. One thousand waves may welter over a sunk wreck, and be felt as one.”

“Yes, I laugh at all mankind, and the imposition that they dare to practice when they talk of hearts. I laugh at human passions and human cares, vice and virtue, religion and impiety; they are all t...”

“[All the ancient wisdom] tells us that work is necessary to us, as much a part of our condition as mortality; that good work is our salvation and our joy; that shoddy or dishonest or self-serving w...”

“We have made it our overriding ambition to escape work, and as a consequence have debased work until it is only fit to escape from. We have debased the products of work and have been, in turn, deba...”

“We left behind the other kids; their path-working, drinking, and being grown up- and rejected all that made them grumpy, uncreative and lifeless. We dumpstered, squatted, and shoplifted our lives b...”

“Sibyl, what do you want?I want to live, the Sibyl said, and her voice rang rich and full. I want to keep on living forever and watching heroes and fools and knights go up and down, into the world a...”

“When God is driven to the periphery of the public square, the human spiritual capacity longs for exercise, and it often finds it in the suspension of disbelief and activity of the imagination that ...”

“When is a monster not a monster? Oh, when you love it.”

“I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the Heart's affections and the truth of the Imagination.”

“Nature: it might be the magical key to unlock a locked imagination.”

“Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.”