263 Quotes by Mark Helprin

The world had courage, faith, beauty, and love, and it had music, which, although not merely an abstraction, was equal to the greatest abstractions and principles – its power to lift, clarify, and carry the soul forever unmatched.

Read what you find interesting, and then follow your interests. You’ll find that in doing so you always generate enough to illuminate the next step.

Mortality is like the cold. It cannot be altered by human conceit or solidarity, and at the end you will be on your knees, in shock and amazement, and then you’ll have only one sword, one shield, one great thing to carry you through.” Alessandro waited to hear what that was, but his father would not say. “If you don’t discover it yourself, it will be nothing more than an exhortation from me.

Your time is a good time, and though I have to leave, you can stay. How lucky you are to be in the city just before it opens its eyes upon a golden age.

As I understand it, miracles come to those who risk defeat in seeking them. They come to those who have exhausted themselves completely in a struggle to accomplish the impossible.

When people love one another, conversation is not a necessity but a pleasure, and when they reach, as at times they do, deep into the immeasurable part of what holds them together, everything can pass between them without a word.

People like that continually expose their souls to mortal danger in imagining that they are free of it, when, indeed, the only mortal danger for the spirit is to remain too long without it. The world is made of fire.

Only bad actors memorize lines. Good actors are perpetually writing them as they act.

The mind, you see, is like a muscle. For it to remain agile and strong, it must work.