Idolatry is not the use of images, but confusing them with what they represent, and in this respect mental images and lofty abstractions can be more … - Alan Watts

In keeping with the old principle of triangulation, you cannot establish the position of a particular object unless you observe it from two particularly different points of view, and thereby calculate its actual distance from you.

There are situations when one owes solitude to other people, if only not to bother them. But, more than this, the multitude needs solitaries as it needs postmen, doctors, and fishermen

For the use of words, and thus of a book, is to point beyond themselves to a world of life and experience that is not mere words or even ideas. Just as money is not real, consumable wealth, books are not life. To idolize scriptures is like eating paper currency.