Conrad Aiken Quotations

I've tried it long ago, with hashish and peyote. Fascinating, yes, but no good, no. This, as we find in alcohol, is an escape from awareness, a cheat, a momentary substitution, and in the end a destruction of it.

The truth--a hideous spectacle!

I do believe in this evolution of consciousness as the only thing which we can embark on, or in fact, willy-nilly, are embarked on; and along with that will go the spiritual discoveries and, I feel, the inexhaustible wonder that one feels, that opens more and more the more you know. It's simply that this increasing knowledge constantly enlarges your kingdom and the capacity for admiring and loving the universe.

Life is the thing--the song of life-- The eager plow, the thirsty knife!

No god save self, that is the way to live ...

Death is one dream out of another flowing.

Death is a meeting place of sea and sea.

We were all born of flesh, in a flare of pain. We do not remember the red roots whence we rose, but we know that we rose and walked, that after a while we shall lie down again.

He whose first emotion, on the view of an excellent work, is to undervalue or depreciate it, will never have one of his own to show.

For in this walk, this voyage, it is yourself, the profound history of your 'self,' that now as always you encounter.