I have no idea where I got all these quotes from, but here they are. I need to put them somewhere, because they’re fascinating.

On a Single Minute: “An infinity of passion can be contained in one minute, like a crowd in a small space.” 

On Being Well-Ordered: “Be steady and well-ordered in your life so that you can be fierce and original in your work.” (This is a particularly motivating idea for me right now.)

On How to Avoid Being Unhappy: “The only way to avoid being unhappy is to close yourself up in Art and to count for nothing all the rest.”

On Making Art: “You don’t make art out of good intentions.” 

On One’s Duty: “One’s duty is to feel what is great, cherish the beautiful, and to not accept the conventions of society with the ignominy that it imposes upon us.” 

(Ignominy means “public shame or disgrace”)

On Poetry in Every Particle: “There is not a particle of life which does not bear poetry within it.” 

On Reading: “What better occupation, really, than to spend the evening at the fireside with a book, with the wind beating on the windows and the lamp burning bright…Haven’t you ever happened to come across in a book some vague notion that you’ve had, some obscure idea that returns from afar and that seems to express completely your most subtle feelings?” 

On Reading to Live: “Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.”

On Speech VS Music: “Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.” 

On the Art of Writing: “The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe.”

On What We All Hide: “Everyone, either from modesty or egotism, hides away the best and most delicate of his soul’s possessions; to gain the esteem of others, we must only ever show our ugliest sides; this is how we keep ourselves on the common level.” 

On Writing: “I am irritated by my own writing. I am like a violinist whose ear is true, but whose fingers refuse to reproduce precisely the sound he hears within.”

Perhaps more to come?