“Whenever you think or you believe or you know, you're a lot of other people: but the moment you feel, you're nobody-but-yourself.”

On the primacy of feeling over thought · Lecture, i: six nonlectures (commonly attributed)

• Feeling
• Individuality
• Self

“I was too tired to think. I merely felt the town as a unique unreality.”

On exhaustion and altered perception · The Enormous Room

• Exhaustion
• Perception
• Reality

“By the way, a gendarme assured me this is not a prison.”

On the irony of official assurances · The Enormous Room

• Authority
• Experience
• Irony

“Knowledge is a polite word for dead but not buried imagination.”

On the limitations of mere knowledge · Lecture or essay (commonly attributed)

• Creativity
• Imagination
• Knowledge

“The most wasted of all days is one without laughter.”

On the essential nature of joy · Interview or letter (commonly attributed)

• Joy
• Laughter
• Life

“A poet is somebody who feels, and who expresses his feelings through words. This may sound easy. It isn't.”

On the craft and difficulty of poetry · Letter to a high school newspaper, October 26, 1955

• Effort
• Expression
• Poetry

“Honesty is the best poverty.”

On the value of truth over material wealth · Letter (commonly attributed)

• Honesty
• Truth
• Values

“Mostpeople are amorous of misunderstanding.”

On the human tendency to misinterpret · Letter to James Angleton, 1939

• Communication
• Cynicism
• Misunderstanding

“Never take anyone's word for anything.”

Advice on independent thinking and skepticism · Letter to his sister, May 3, 1922

• Advice
• Scepticism
• Trust

“The artist is no more (and no less) than a human being who has found a way to say what he cannot not say.”

On the compulsion of artistic expression · Lecture, i: six nonlectures

• Art
• Creativity
• Expression

“To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.”

On the value of selfhood and resistance to conformity · Letter (commonly attributed)

• Courage
• Individuality
• Self

“Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight or any experience that reveals the human spirit.”

Linking self-trust with openness, wonder and creative freedom · Lecture / essay

• Art
• Hope
• Joy

“The artist is no other than he who unlearns what he has learned, in order to know himself.”

Presenting artistic creation as a recovery of authentic self-knowledge · Lecture / essay

• Art
• Truth

“Nearly anybody can learn to think, or believe, or know, but not a single human being can be taught to feel.”

Distinguishing emotional understanding from information or doctrine · Lecture / essay

• Art
• Truth

“The hardest battle is to be nobody-but-yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else.”

Defending individuality against social pressure and conformity · Lecture / essay

• Art
• Truth

“It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.”

A concise affirmation of self-knowledge and authentic individuality · Lecture / essay

• Hope
• Truth