“When people first discover beauty, they tend to linger. Even if they don’t at first recognize it for what it is.”

“When you know what you're against you have taken the first step to discovering what you're for.”

“He who hath bent him o'er the dead
Ere the first day of death is fled,—
The first dark day of nothingness,
The last of danger and distress,
Before decay's effacing fingers
Have swept the lines where beauty lingers.”

“When people have tried everything and have discovered that nothing works, they will tend to revert to what they know best—which will often be the tribe, the totem, or the taboo.”

“Formalism is music that people don’t understand at first hearing.”

“First of all, Iit’s all people like you. And that’s what’s so scary. you don’t know what you’re doing.”

“All little creatures are beautiful… every living thing when it first sees life is born in beauty. What they grow to be is a different matter.”

“I think when a man first discovers that two and two is four, there is 'beauty' in that; and we can see why. But if people stand and look at the moon and one says 'I think it's just beautiful tonight' and the other says 'The moon makes me feel awful' we are both 'clear'. A geometric shape – we know why we like it; and an unreasonable shape; it has a certain mystery that we recognize as real; but it is difficult to put these things in an objective way.”

“The last thing one discovers in composing a work is what to put first.”

“Electricity for example was considered a very Satanic thing when it was first discovered and utilized.”