For an artist to do creative work, he needs at once physical health and some physiomental ill health. He needs both serenity and gloom.

Men had been living a proud life, having felt no need for the spirit-until Christianity invented it.

All around, vastly and untidily, stretched the country for which he grieved. He was to give his life for it. But would that great country ... take the slightest heed of his death? He did not know; and it did not matter. His was a battlefield without glory, a battlefield where none could display the deeds of valor; it was the front line of the spirit.

The period of childhood is a stage on which time and space become entangled.

The mind, by its very nature, persistently tries to live forever, resisting age and attempting to give itself a form... . When a person passes his prime and his life begins to lose true vigor and charm, his mind starts functioning as if it were another form of life; it imitates what life does, eventually doing what life cannot do.