There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive.

One cannot violate the promptings of one's nature without having that nature recoil upon itself.

Darn the wheel of the world! Why must it continually turn over? Where is the reverse gear?

The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.

I write for no other purpose than to add to the beauty that now belongs to me. I write a book for no other reason than to add three or four hundred acres to my magnificent estate.

Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes, playing a poor hand well.

The scab is a traitor to his God, his mother, and his class.

I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.

There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive.

San Francisco is gone. Nothing remains of it but memories.

I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.

Affluence means influence.

If cash comes with fame, come fame; if cash comes without fame, come cash.

A bone to the dog is not charity. Charity is the bone shared with the dog, when you are just as hungry as the dog.

You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.

Do you know the only value life has is what life puts on itself?

Life is so short. I would rather sing one song than interpret the thousand.

Life is not always a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes, playing a poor hand well.

As one grows weaker one is less susceptible to suffering. There is less hurt because there is less to hurt.

The proper function of man is to live not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them.

If cash comes with fame come fame if cash comes without fame come cash.

A bone to the dog is not charity. Charity is the bone shared with the dog when you are just as hungry as the dog.

There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living this ecstasy comes when one is most alive and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive.

You cant wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.

He was a silent fury who no torment could tame.

Limited minds can recognize limitations only in others.

Mercy did not exist in the primordial life. It was misunderstood for fear, and such misunderstandings made for death.

Love, genuine passionate love, was his for the first time.

In a saturated population life is always cheap.

Show me a man with a tattoo and I'll show you a man with an interesting past.

Life achieves its summit when it does to the uttermost that which it was equipped to do.

Young kids are taking Viagra, ecstasy. They even want instant sex.

As a small child, I felt in my heart two contradictory feelings, the horror of life and the ecstasy of life.

Not every song I write is ecstasy. And it can happen only one time. After that, when you sing the same melody and words, it's pleasure, but you don't get wiped out.

Poetry for me is as much a spiritual practice as sexual ecstasy is.

I think we've come a long way since then. The big thing that changed was when ecstasy came along in Britain.

I will not be just a tourist in the world of images, just watching images passing by which I cannot live in, make love to, possess as permanent sources of joy and ecstasy.

Art and Religion are, then, two roads by which men escape from circumstance to ecstasy. Between aesthetic and religious rapture there is a family alliance. Art and Religion are means to similar states of mind.

Great passions may give us a quickened sense of life, ecstasy and sorrow of love, the various forms of enthusiastic activity, disinterested or otherwise, which comes naturally to many of us.

Man thrives where angels would die of ecstasy and where pigs would die of disgust.

My job in this life is to give people spiritual ecstasy through music. In my concerts people cry, laugh, dance. If they climaxed spiritually, I did my job. I did it decently and honestly.

You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.

Existence itself does not feel horrible; it feels like an ecstasy, rather, which we have only to be still to experience.

There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive.

Life has always taken place in a tumult without apparent cohesion, but it only finds its grandeur and its reality in ecstasy and in ecstatic love.

Ecstasy is not really part of the scene we can do on celluloid.

Melancholy is as seductive as Ecstasy.

If a hermit lives in a state of ecstasy, his lack of comfort becomes the height of comfort. He must relinquish it.

And I have been able to give freedom and life which was acknowledged in the ecstasy of walking hand in hand across the most beautiful bridge of the world, the cables enclosing us and pulling us upward in such a dance as I have never walked and never can walk with another.