After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.

Aldous Leonard Huxley

When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.

Khalil Gibran

"Since art is an expression of human aspirations and hopes, it has an immensely important part to play in the moral development of society - or at any rate, that is what it is called to do; if it fails, it can only mean that something is wrong with society. Art cannot be given purely utilitarian and pragmatic objectives. A film based on such premises cannot hold together as an artistic entity, for the effect of cinema - or any other art - on the beholder is far deeper and more complex than such terms allow. Art ennobles man by the mere fact of its existence. It creates those intangible bonds which draw mankind together into a community, and that moral atmosphere in which, as in a culture medium, art will once again germinate and flourish. Otherwise it will degenarate into a wilding like an apple-tree in an abandoned orchard. If art is not used according to its vocation, it dies away, and that means that nobody has any need of its existence."

Andrey Tarkovsky ("Sculpting in Time")

"A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep."

Saul Bellow

"What isolation?" I asked him

The isolation that you find everywhere, particularly in our age.  But it won't come to an end right now, because the time has not yet come.  Today everyone asserts his own personality and strives to live a full life as an individual.  But these efforts lead not to a full life but to suicide, because, instead of realizing his personality, man only slips into total isolation.  For in our age mankind has been broken up into self-contained individuals, each of whom retreats into his lair, trying to stay away from the rest of mankind, and finally isolating himself from people and people from him.  And, while he accumulates material wealth in his isolation, he thinks with satisfaction how mighty and secure he has become, because he is mad and cannot see that the more goods he accumulates, the deeper he sinks into suicidal impotence.  The reason for this is that he has become accustomed to relying only on himself; he has split off from the whole and become an isolated unit; he has trained his soul not to rely on human help, not to believe in men and mankind, and only worry that the wealth and privileges he has accumulated may get lost.  Everywhere men today are turning scornfully away from the truth that the security of the individual cannot be achieved by his isolated efforts but only by mankind as a whole."

Fyodor Dostoevsky

"Through defeats and disasters, humanity searches for the elixir of youth; that is, of life made into thought, the ardor that upholds belief in the wider usefuleness of our individual effort, even if it apparently changes nothing in the iron working of the world. It may be that we Eastern Europeans have been given the lead in this search. By choosing, we had to give up some values for the sake of others, which is the essence of tragedy. Yet only such an experience can whet our understanding, so that we see an old truth in a new light: when ambition counsels us to lift ourselves above simple moral rules guarded by the poor in spirit, rather than to choose them as our compass needle amid the uncertainties of change, we stifle the only thing that can redeem our follies and mistakes: love. "

Czesław Miłosz

"... since a person who, without intending to lie, says that he saw or understood a certain thing ought to be believed more than a thousand others who deny it merely because they could not have seen it or understood it: just as, in the discovery of the antipodes, the testimony of a few sailors who had sailed around the earth was believed rather than a thousand philosophers who could not believe it was round."

René Descartes

"BEING ALIVE

The only reason for living is being fully alive;
and you can't be fully alive if you are crushed by secret fear,
and bullied with the threat: get money, or eat dirt! -
and forced to do a thousand mean things meaner than your nature,
and forced to clutch on to possessions in the hope they'll make you feel safe,
and forced to watch everyone that comes near you,
lest they've come to do you down.

Without a bit of common trust in one another, we can't live.
In the end, we go insane.
It is the penalty of fear and meanness, being meaner than our natures are.

To be alive, you've got to feel a generous flow,
and under a competitive system that is impossible, really.
The world is waiting for a new great movement of generosity,
or for a great wave of death. We must change the system,
and make living free to all men,
or we must see men die,
and then die ourselves.

D.H. Lawrence

But as often as this preconceived opinion of the sovereign power of a God presents itself to my mind, I am constrained to admit that it is easy for him, if he wishes it, to cause me to err, even in matters where I think I possess the highest evidence; and, on the other hand, as often as I direct my attention to things which I think I apprehend with great clearness, I am so persuaded of their truth that I naturally break out into expressions such as these: Deceive me who may, no one will yet ever be able to bring it about that I am not, so long as I shall be conscious that I am, or at any future time cause it to be true that I have never been, it being now true that I am, or make two and three more or less than five, in supposing which, and other like absurdities, I discover a manifest contradiction.

René Descartes