Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience, and our aesthetic enjoyment is recognition of the pattern.
Contrary to general belief, I do not believe that friends are necessarily the people you like best, they are merely the people who got there first.
The past is the only dead thing that smells sweet.
Be wise with speed . A fool at forty is a fool indeed.
Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
People who want to understand democracy should spend less time in the library with Aristotle and more time on the buses and in the subway.
My music is best understood by children and animals.
The history of the Victorian Age will never be written: we know too much about it. For ignorance is the first requisite of the historian – ignorance, which simplifies and clarifies, which selects and omits, with a placid perfection unattainable by the highest art.