Have you ever thought… about whatever man builds,
that all of man’s industrial efforts, all his calculations
and computations, all the nights spent over working draughts
and blueprints, invariably culminate in the production of a
thing whose sole and guiding principle is the ultimate pinciple
of simplicity?

It is as if there were a natural law which ordained that to
acheive this end, to refine the curve of a piece of furniture, or
a ship’s keel, or the fuselage of an airplane, until gradually it
partakes of the elementary purity of the curve of the human breast
or shoulder, there must be experimentations of several generations
of craftsmen. In any thing at all, perfection is finally attained
not when there is not longer anything to add, but when there is no
longer anything to take away, when a body has been stripped
down to its nakedness.

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

A perfection of means and confusion of aims, seems to be our main problem.

Steadfastness, that is holding on;
Patience, that is holding back;
Expectancy, that is holding the face up;
Obedience, that is holding one’s self in readiness to go or do;
Listening, that is holding quiet and still so as to hear.

All great sages are as despotic as generals, and as ungracious and indelicate as generals, because they are confident of their impunity.