WILD GEESE

"You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things."

If

"If you can keep your head when all about you,
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too.

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise.

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master,
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster,
And treat those two impostors just the same.

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken,
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools.

If you can make one heap of all your winnings,
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe a word about your loss.

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew,
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you,
Except the will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much.

If you can fill the unforgiving minute,
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,  
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,  
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!"

"The condition of being good is that it should always be possible for you to be morally destroyed by something you couldn’t prevent. To be a good human being is to have a kind of openness to the world, an ability to trust uncertain things beyond your own control, that can lead you to be shattered in very extreme circumstances for which you were not to blame. That says something very important about the human condition of the ethical life: that it is based on a trust in the uncertain and on a willingness to be exposed; it’s based on being more like a plant than like a jewel, something rather fragile, but whose very particular beauty is inseparable from its fragility."

"This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body."

"There is one best place to bury a dog. If you bury him in this spot, he will come to you when you call - come to you over the grim, dim frontier of death,  and down the well-remembered path, and to your side again. And though you call a dozen living dogs to heel, they shall not growl at him nor resent his coming, for he belongs there. People may scoff at you, who see no lightest blade of grass bent by his footfall, who hear no whimper, people who may never really have had a dog. Smile at them, for you shall know something that is hidden from them and which is well worth the knowing. The one best place to bury a good dog is in the heart of his master."

The Laughing Heart 

your life is your life

don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.

be on the watch.

there are ways out.

there is a light somewhere.

it may not be much light but

it beats the darkness.

be on the watch.

the gods will offer you chances.

know them.

take them.

you can’t beat death but

you can beat death in life, sometimes.

and the more often you learn to do it,

the more light there will be.

your life is your life.

know it while you have it.

you are marvelous

the gods wait to delight

in you.

All beliefs in whatever realm are theories at some level. (Stephen Schneider)

Do not condemn the judgment of another because it differs from your own. You may both be wrong. (Dandemis)

Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider. (Francis Bacon)

Never fall in love with your hypothesis. (Peter Medawar)

It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories instead of theories to suit facts. (Arthur Conan Doyle)

A theory should not attempt to explain all the facts, because some of the facts are wrong. (Francis Crick)

The thing that doesn’t fit is the thing that is most interesting. (Richard Feynman)

To kill an error is as good a service as, and sometimes even better than, the establishing of a new truth or fact. (Charles Darwin)

It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so. (Mark Twain)

Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong. (Thomas Jefferson)

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second, it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident. (Arthur Schopenhauer)

Desiderata

Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.

As far as possible without surrender be on good terms with all persons.

Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even the dull and ignorant; they too have their story.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit.

If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter;

for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.

Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.

Keep interested in your career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs; for the world is full of trickery.

But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals;

and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself.

Especially, do not feign affection.

Neither be critical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.

Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with imaginings.

Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself.

You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars;

you have a right to be here.

And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be,

and whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul.

With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be careful. Strive to be happy.

How I Go to the Woods

Ordinarily, I go to the woods alone, with not a single friend, for they are all smilers and talkers and therefore unsuitable.

I don’t really want to be witnessed talking to the catbirds or hugging the old black oak tree. I have my way of praying, as you no doubt have yours.

Besides, when I am alone I can become invisible. I can sit on the top of a dune as motionless as an uprise of weeds, until the foxes run by unconcerned. I can hear the almost unhearable sound of the roses singing.

If you have ever gone to the woods with me, I must love you very much.

"We are in the habit of imagining our lives to be linear, a long march from birth to death in which we mass our powers, only to surrender them again, all the while slowly losing our youthful beauty. This is a brutal untruth. Life meanders like a path through the woods. We have seasons when we flourish and seasons when the leaves fall from us, revealing our bare bones. Given time, they grow again."

"The important thing is this: To be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become."

"Think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.

Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself.

But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:

To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.

To know the pain of too much tenderness.

To be wounded by your own understanding of love;

And to bleed willingly and joyfully.

To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving;

To rest at the noon hour and meditate love’s ecstasy;

To return home at eventide with gratitude;

And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips."

"The trick is in what one emphasizes. We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves happy. The amount of work is the same."

"It's weird. Day by day nothing seems to change but pretty soon, everything's different."

"I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure: Try to please everybody."

"Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense."

It is every man's obligation to put back into the world at least the equivalent of what he takes out of it.

"Restlessness and discontent are the first necessities of progress."

"No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare."

"Research is the process of going up alleys to see if they are blind."

Longing

"Meanwhile, someplace in the world, somebody is making love and another a poem. Elsewhere in the universe, a star manyfold the mass of our third-rate sun is living out its final moments in a wild spin before collapsing into a black hole, its exhale bending spacetime itself into a well of nothingness that can swallow every atom that ever touched us and every datum we ever produced, every poem and statue and symphony we’ve ever known — an entropic spectacle insentient to questions of blame and mercy, devoid of why. 

In four billion years, our own star will follow its fate, collapsing into a white dwarf. We exist only by chance, after all. The Voyager will still be sailing into the interstellar shorelessness on the wings of the “heavenly breezes” Kepler had once imagined, carrying Beethoven on a golden disc crafted by a symphonic civilization that long ago made love and war and mathematics on a distant blue dot. 

But until that day comes, nothing once created ever fully leaves us. Seeds are planted and come abloom generations, centuries, civilizations later, migrating across coteries and countries and continents. Meanwhile, people live and people die — in peace as war rages on, in poverty and disrepute as latent fame awaits, with much that never meets its more, in shipwrecked love. 

I will die. 

You will die. 

The atoms that huddled for a cosmic blink around the shadow of a self will return to the seas that made us. 

What will survive of us are shoreless seeds and stardust."

"Remember that as a teenager you are in the last stage of your life when you will be happy to hear the phone is for you."

"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work. "

"Anyone who sees life as anything more than pure entertainment is missing the point."

"One day Alice came to a fork in the road and saw a Cheshire cat in a tree. "Which road do I take?" she asked. "Where do you want to go?" was his response. "I don't know," Alice answered. "Then," said the cat, "it doesn't matter."

"When you're going through hell, keep going."

THE SUMMER DAY

"Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear?

Who made the grasshopper?

This grasshopper, I mean—

the one who has flung herself out of the grass,

the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,

who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—

who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.

Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.

Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?"

"Be careful what you pretend to be, because you are what you pretend to be."

"Fairy tales do not tell children that dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children that they can be killed"

"Things turn out best for the people who make the best of the way things turn out."

"Everybody believes in something and everybody, by virtue of the fact that they believe in something, use that something to support their own existence."

"There are two kinds of light--the glow that illuminates, and the glare that obscures."

"Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated."

"Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are."

"Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every New Year find you a better man"

" I think we are drawn to dogs because they are the uninhibited creatures we might be if we weren't certain we knew better. They fight for honor at the first challenge, make love with no moral restraint, and they do not, for all their marvelous instincts, appear to know about death. They are such wonderfully uncomplicated beings, so they need us to do their worrying."

"In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."

"If your dog is fat, you aren't getting enough exercise"

"It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them."

"Is it ignorance or apathy? Hey, I don't know and I don't care."

"There are two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle."

"Do not take life too seriously. You will never get out of it alive"

"It is always easier to believe than to deny. Our minds are naturally affirmative."

"Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes."

"There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality."

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit."

"Choose well, your choice is brief and yet endless."

"Patience and fortitude conquer all things."

"Thousands of tired, nerve shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity; and that mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers but as fountain of life."

"Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already tomorrow in Australia "

"Don't worry about what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and do that. Because what the world needs are people who have come alive."

"To those devoid of imagination, a blank place on the map is useless waste; to others, the most valuable part."

"The very purpose of existence is to reconcile the glowing opinion we hold of ourselves with the appalling things that other people think about us."

"Most people are on the world, not in it -- have no conscious sympathy or relationship to anything about them -- undiffused, separate, and rigidly alone like marbles of polished stone, touching but separate."

"The more powerful and original a mind, the more it will incline towards the religion of solitude."

"Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary."

"I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, it's a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope. Which is what I do, and that enables you to laugh at life's realities."

"Everything has beauty. Not everyone sees it."

"I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones."

"Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up."

"I am trying to be the person my dog thinks I am"

"Sometimes I lie awake at night and I ask, 'Where have I gone wrong?' Then a voice says to me, 'This is going to take more than one night."

"A successful person is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks that others throw at him."

"The most perfidious way of harming a cause consists of defending it deliberately with faulty arguments."

"We must make the world honest before we tell our young people that honesty is the best policy."

"The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously."

"How come the dove gets to be the peace symbol? How about the pillow? It has more feathers than the dove, and it doesn't have that dangerous beak."

"Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic."

"Falling flat on your face is still moving forward"

"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage."

"The charm of fishing is that it is the pursuit of what is elusive but attainable, a perpetual series of occasions of hope."

"What we do for ourselves dies with us. What we do for others and the world remains and is immortal."

"The intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, the sensible man hardly anything."

"God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh"

"I base my fashion taste on what doesn't itch."

"The longest journey is the journey inward."

"He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have."

"Life has no other discipline to impose, if we would but realize it, than to accept life unquestioningly. Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate or despise, serves to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty, painful, evil, can become a source of beauty, joy and strength, if faced with an open mind. Every moment is a golden one for him who was the vision to recognize it as such."

"The whole life of man is but a point of time; let us enjoy it."

"Wanting to be someone else is a waste of the person you are."

"There is no greater sin than desire, No greater curse than discontent, No greater misfortune than wanting something for oneself. Therefore he who knows that enough is enough will always have enough."

"Insanity in individuals is something rare, but in groups, parties, and nations, it is the rule. "

"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."

"The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me."

"I hope that someday we will be able to put away our fears and prejudices and just laugh at people."

"Vote for the man who promises least; he'll be the least disappointing."

"Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut."

"Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality."

"You have to know how to accept rejection and reject acceptance."

"We are continually faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems."

"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands but seeing with new eyes."

"I'd rather live with a good question than a bad answer."

"If you don't make mistakes, you're not working on hard enough problems. And that's a big mistake."

"The bad news is time flies. The good news is you're the pilot."

Silent gratitude isn't very much use to anyone.

"Be more concerned with your character than your reputation. Your character is what you really are while your reputation is merely what others think you are."

"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."

"We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing."

"There is no gift of nature, or effect of art, however beneficial to mankind, which, either by casual deviations, or foolish perversions, is not sometimes mischievous. Whatever may be the cause of happiness, may be made, likewise, the cause of misery. The medicine, which, rightly applied, has power to cure, has, when rashness or ignorance prescribes it, the same power to destroy."

"When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a nail."

"You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions."

Happiness often sneaks in through a door you didn't know you left open."

"Wilderness is not redeemed by man. man is redeemed, by wilderness."

"When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us."

"Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself."

"Man, it's the same stuff they tried to pull in my day. If it ain't that piece of paper, there's some other choice they're gonna try and make for you. You gotta do what Randall Pink Floyd wants to do man. Let me tell you this, the older you do get the more rules they're gonna try to get you to follow. You just gotta keep livin' man, L-I-V-I-N."

"You aren't done raking until you've played in the leaf pile."

"The shortest answer is doing."

"Promise me you'll always remember: You're braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think"

"When the best leader leads, the people say we did it ourselves."

"We are never so much disposed to quarrel with others as when we are dissatisfied with ourselves."

"Thanksgiving Day comes, by statute, once a year; to the honest man it comes as frequently as the heart of gratitude will allow."

"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands but seeing with new eyes."

"Don't knock the weather; nine-tenths of the people couldn't start a conversation if it didn't change once in a while."

"There is no such thing as boring knowledge. There is only boring presentation."

Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.”

"Fuck it. If you've bought the ticket, take the ride"

"Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm."

“I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxous, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.”

"Everyone should be respected as an individual, but no one idolized."

"The young man knows the rules, but the old man knows the exceptions."

"An optimist is the human personification of spring."

"The best you can hope for in this life is that your delusions are benign and your compulsions have utility."

"The goal shouldn't be to eliminate failure; it should be to build a system resilient enough to withstand it."

"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect."

“Before enlightenment; chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment; chop wood, carry water.”

“The world is wide, and I will not waste my life in friction when it could be turned into momentum.”

"A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing."

"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."

"If you don't like something change it; if you can't change it, change the way you think about it."

"Change is the only constant."

"Remember. Let go. Move on."

"Do one thing every day that scares you."

"Sometimes serendipity is just intention, unmasked."

"People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it."

"Youth has no age."

"The greatest good you can do for another is not just to share your riches but to reveal to him his own."

"The light at the end of the tunnel is not an illusion. The tunnel is."

"Never regret. If it's good, it's wonderful. If it's bad, it's experience."

"I cannot make my days longer so I strive to make them better."

"Never regret. If it's good, it's wonderful. If it's bad, it's experience."

"What we see is mainly what we look for."

"More powerful than the will to win is the courage to begin."

"The only Zen you find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there."

"Friendship isn't a big thing. It's a million little things."

"Enthusiasm is contagious. You can start an epidemic."

"The person who confesses ignorance shows it once; the person who conceals it, shows it many times."

"Remember that sometimes not getting what you want is a wonderful stroke of luck."

"If you are too busy to laugh, you are too busy."

"If you light a lamp for somebody else it will also brighten your path."

"It is not in the pursuit of happiness that we find fulfillment, it is in the happiness of pursuit."

"Be nice to people on your way up because you'll meet them on your way down."

"The truth will set you free, but first it will make you miserable"

"Think about fear, decide right now how you're going to deal with fear, because fear is going to be the great issue of your life, I promise you. Fear will be the fuel for all your success, and the root cause of all your failures, and the underlying dilemma in every story that you tell yourself about yourself. And the only chance you'll have against fear? Follow it. Steer by it. Don't think of fear as the villain. Think of fear as your guide, your pathfinder."

"If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver."

"I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free."

"Don't just read the easy stuff. You may be entertained by it, but you will never grow from it."

"Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time."

"I love the relationship that anyone has with music: because there's something in us that is beyond the reach of words, something that eludes and defies our best attempts to spit it out. It's the best part of us, probably, the richest and strangest part..."

"No matter how rich you become, how famous or powerful, when you die the size of your funeral will still pretty much depend on the weather."

"It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit."

"Kites rise highest against the wind - not with it."

"It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop."

"It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change."

"A mediocre idea that generates enthusiasm will go further than a great idea that inspires no one."

"Nothing is a waste of time if you use the experience wisely."

"The achievements of any organization are the results of the combined effort of each individual."

"Never discourage anyone.....who continually makes progress, no matter how slow."

"Life is the art of drawing without an eraser."

"Do not go where the path may lead; go instead where there is no path and leave a trail."

"Your day's work might turn out to have been a mess. So what? Vonnegut said "When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth." So go ahead and make big scratches and mistakes. Use up lots of paper. Perfectionism is a mean, frozen form of idealism, while messes are the artist's true friend. What people somehow (inadvertently, I'm sure) forgot to mention when we were children was that we need to make messes in order to find out who we are and why we are here—and, by extension, what we're supposed to be writing."

"We are judged by what we finish, not by what we start."

"Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself."

"Your goals are insane. Be honest about that and write them down anyway."

"Finally, you’ll make lots of acquaintances and a few great friends as you play open mics. These are your peers; people like you who aren’t afraid to begin at the beginning. They’re the go-getters, the ones who aren’t afraid to go down to the water and drink. You may not always like their music. You don’t have to. What you should be able to appreciate, however, is their like-mindedness."

"A man must make his opportunity, as oft as find it."

"Progress is impossible without change and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything."

"Hell, there are no rules here - we're trying to accomplish something."

"You can't build a reputation on what you are going to do."

"Your attitude is more important that your aptitude."

"If you can't get rid of the skeleton in your closet, you'd best teach it to dance."

"Every artist was first an amateur."

"To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing."

"To lead the people, walk behind them."

"The wisest men follow their own direction."

"Most of the shadows of life are caused by standing in our own sunshine."

"A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."

"You can't turn back the clock. But you can wind it up again."

"There are two ways to spread happiness; either be the light who shines it or be the mirror who reflects it."

"The real leader has no need to lead; he is content to point the way."

"If everything seems under control, you're just not going fast enough."

"Every man is guilty of all the good he didn't do."

"You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus."

"To be wronged is nothing unless you continue to remember it."

"Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavour."

"A man's errors are his portals of discovery."

"It's not what you are that holds you back, it's what you think you are not."

"When you're through changing, you're through."

"Nobody can do everything, but everybody can do something."

"The world hates change, yet it is the only thing that has brought progress."

“Man is free at the moment he wishes to be.”

"Never fear shadows. They simply mean there's a light shining somewhere nearby."

“Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions."

“A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.”

“If you have always done it that way, it is probably wrong.”

“The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect, but by the play instinct arising from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the object it loves.”

 “There is only one thing stronger than all the armies of the world: and that is an idea whose time has come.”

 “Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.”

“Give me the young man who has brains enough to make a fool of himself.”

“I’ve been doing a lot of abstract painting lately, extremely abstract. No brush, no paint, no canvas, I just think about it.”

“I am looking for a lot of people who have an infinite capacity to not know what can’t be done.”

"He who deliberates fully before taking a step will spend his entire life on one leg."

"The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that it has never tried to contact us."

"Just remember, if the world didn't suck, we'd all fall off."

"If you think you are too small to be effective, you have never been in bed with a mosquito"

"Often people attempt to live their lives backwards; they try to have more things, or more money, in order to do more of what they want, so they will be happier. The way it actually works is the reverse. You must first be who you really are, then do what you need to do, in order to have what you want."

"Don’t worry about people stealing an idea. If it’s original, you will have to ram it down their throats."

"The temptation to quit will be greatest just before you are about to succeed."

"Everyone who’s ever taken a shower has an idea. It’s the person who gets out of the shower, dries off and does something about it that makes a difference."

"Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere."

"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."

"Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing."

"A single question can be more influential than a thousand statements."

"When the student is ready the teacher will appear."

"He who asks is a fool for five minutes, but he who does not ask remains a fool forever."

"Just because your voice reaches halfway around the world doesn’t mean you are wiser than when it reached only to the end of the bar."

"The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity."

"A happy life is just a string of happy moments. But most people don’t allow the happy moment, because they’re so busy trying to get a happy life"

"I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn’t learn something from him."

"There are two mistakes one can make along the road to truth…not going all the way, and not starting."

“Ability is what you are capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it. “

“Live your life so that you would not be ashamed to sell the family parrot to the town gossip.”

“Be like a duck. Calm on the surface, but paddling like the dickens underneith.”

""Never go to bed mad.  Stay up and fight.

"We are all a little weird and life's a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love."

"A good marriage is like a casserole, only those responsible for it really know what goes in it."

"Don't wait for people to be friendly. Show them how."

“Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.”

"Beware of the half truth. You may have gotten hold of the wrong half."

"I start with the premise that the function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers."

""Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school."

"Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better.  It's not."

"Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little."

"The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit."

"Don’t ever write a novel unless it hurts like a hot turd coming out.”

"It's easy to make a buck.  It's a lot tougher to make a difference."

"Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do."

"I've learned that you shouldn't go through life with a catchers mitt on both hands.  You need to be able to throw something back."

"Go the extra mile.  It's never crowded."

“Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they’ve had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people.”

“For something this complicated, it’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.”

"I want to put a ding in the universe."

“Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes… the ones who see things differently — they’re not fond of rules… You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things… they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.”

"If your ship doesn't come in, swim out to it."

‎"Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell."

"Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.”

“Fall seven times, stand up eight.”

“The greatest oak was once a little nut who held its ground.”

“When your dreams turn to dust, vacuum.”

"One resolution I have made, and try always to keep, is this:  To rise above the little things."

"Pay no attention to critics. No one ever erected a statue to a critic."

"If things start happening, don't worry, don't stew, just go right along and you'll start happening too."

"In the depth of winter, I finally learned that there was within me an invincible summer."

"Nothing shows a man's character more than what he laughs at."

"People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is light from within."

"Do not argue with an idiot. He will drag you down to his level and beat you with experience."

"I always wonder why birds stay in the same place when they can fly anywhere on the earth. Then I ask myself the same question."

"Learn a lesson from your dog: no matter what life brings you, kick some grass over that shit and move on."

"I suppose the thing that I would have like to have known or be reassured about is that in the world, what counts more than talent, what counts more than energy or concentration or commitment or anything else, is kindness. And the more in the world you encounter kindness - or cheerfulness which is its kind of amiable uncle or aunt - the more… just the better the world always is. And all the big words - virtue, justice, truth - are dwarfed by the greatness of kindness."

"If you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room"

"Listen earnestly to anything your children want to tell you, no matter what. If you don't listen eagerly to the little stuff when they are little, they won't tell you the big stuff when they are big, because to them all of it has always been big stuff."

"If you are bored and disgusted by politics and don’t bother to vote, you are in effect voting for the entrenched Establishments of the two major parties, who rest assured are not dumb and are keenly aware that it is in their interests to keep you disgusted and bored and cynical and to give you every possible psychological reason to stay at home doing one-hitters and watching MTV Spring Break on Primary Day. By all means stay home if you want, but don’t bullshit yourself that you’re not voting. In reality, there is no such thing as not voting: you either vote by voting, or you vote by staying home and tacitly doubling the value of some Diehard’s vote."

"When faced with two choices, simply toss a coin. It works not because it settles the question for you, but because in that brief moment when the coin is in the air, you suddenly know what you are hoping for."

"There are several kinds of love. One is a selfish, mean, grasping, egotistical thing which uses love for self-importance. This is the ugly and crippling kind. The other is an outpouring of everything good in you — of kindness and consideration and respect — not only the social respect of manners but the greater respect which is recognition of another person as unique and valuable. The first kind can make you sick and small and weak but the second can release in you strength, and courage and goodness and even wisdom you didn’t know you had."

"See, I think our whole society is much too problem-solving oriented. It is far more interesting to [participate in] ‘problem creation’ … You know, ask yourself an interesting enough question and your attempt to find a tailor-made solution to that question will push you to a place where, pretty soon, you’ll find yourself all by your lonesome — which I think is a more interesting place to be."

"It is a curious thought, but it is only when you see people looking ridiculous that you realize just how much you love them."

"If I get up every day with the optimism that I have the capacity for growth, then that’s success for me."

“Show me a person who never made a mistake, and I will show you a person who never did anything.”

"Try to remain humble. Smartness kills everything."

"Most people never run far enough on their first wind to find out they've got a second."

"Try not to become a man of success but rather to become a man of value."

"Once a word leaves your mouth, you cannot chase it back even with the swiftest horse."

"As soon as anyone starts telling you to be realistic, cross that person off your invitation list."

"It is better to trust and be disappointed once in a while than it is to distrust and be miserable all the time."

"Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen."

“Disturb us, Lord, When we are too well pleased with ourselves,

When our dreams have come true because we have dreamed too little,

When we arrived safely ,because we sailed too close to the shore.

Disturb us, Lord, when with the abundance of things we possess we have lost our thirst for the waters of life."

"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."

“If failure is not an option then neither is success.”

"So here’s the thing about changing the world. It turns out that’s not even the question, because you don’t have a choice. You are going to change the world, because that is actually what the world is. You do not pass through this life, it passes through you. You experience it, you interpret it, you act, and then it is different. That happens constantly. You are changing the world. You always have been, and now, it becomes real on a level that it hasn’t been before. And that’s why I’ve been talking only about you and the tension within you, because you are — not in a clichéd sense, but in a weirdly literal sense — the future."

"For every bridge you build together with your community of readers, there’s a new set of trolls who sit underneath it."

"One moment of unconditional love can invalidate an entire lifetime of uncertainty and doubt."

“Grief is like the ocean; it comes on waves ebbing and flowing. Sometimes the water is calm, and sometimes it is overwhelming. All we can do is learn to swim.”

“I’d rather be in the mountains thinking of God, than in church thinking about the mountains.”

“It often takes two to do a good painting, one to paint it, and another to rap the painter smartly with a hammer before he or she can ruin it.”

“The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.”

“Once you learn to quit, it becomes a habit.”

“Remember the two benefits of failure. First, if you do fail, you learn what doesn't work; and second, the failure gives you the opportunity to try a new approach.”

"When looking for faults use a mirror, not a telescope."

“If we were all to sit in a circle and confess our sins, we would laugh at each other for lack of originality.”

"Your customer doesn’t care how much you know until they know how much you care."

“The naked Truth is always better than the best-dressed lie.”

“Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.”

"Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, or you shall learn nothing."

"One day, a burro fell into a well, Juárez Correa began. It wasn’t hurt, but it couldn’t get out. The burro’s owner decided that the aged beast wasn’t worth saving, and since the well was dry, he would just bury both. He began to shovel clods of earth into the well. The burro cried out, but the man kept shoveling. Eventually, the burro fell silent. The man assumed the animal was dead, so he was amazed when, after a lot of shoveling, the burro leaped out of the well. It had shaken off each clump of dirt and stepped up the steadily rising mound until it was able to jump out.

Juárez Correa looked at his class. “We are like that burro,” he said. “Everything that is thrown at us is an opportunity to rise out of the well we are in.”

"The presence of positives always outweighs the absence of negatives."

“In a room where

people unanimously maintain

a conspiracy of silence,

one word of truth

sounds like a pistol shot.”

"An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field."

“Art does not reproduce what we see; rather, it makes us see.”

"The bird of paradise lands only on the hand that does not grasp."

“Anyone who isn’t embarrassed of who they were last year probably isn’t learning enough.”

"The person who is waiting for something to turn up might start with their shirt sleeves."

"You can be Cautious or you can be Creative (but there’s no such thing as a Cautious Creative)."

"There is no walls. There is no territory. Everything is discussed. Everything is fair game. Criticism is welcome, and when you have that, then you have a hell of an organization. That free flow through all those people is what really makes it work. And that includes everything from draft to O's and X's. Nothing should be left to one area -- only to the president, only to the GM, only to the coach -- or the culture just doesn't form. At least that's what's worked for us... You got to get over yourself and realize that it takes a group to get this thing done."

“invent yourself and then reinvent yourself,

don’t swim in the same slough.

invent yourself and then reinvent yourself and

stay out of the clutches of mediocrity.

invent yourself and then reinvent yourself,

change your tone and shape so often that they can never categorize you.

reinvigorate yourself and

accept what is

but only on the terms that you have invented

and reinvented.

be self-taught.

and reinvent your life because you must;

it is your life and

its history

and the present

belong only to

you.”

“And the days that I keep my gratitude higher than my expectations, I have really good days.”

“Half of seeming clever is keeping your mouth shut at the right times.”

“If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.”

"When you shoot an arrow of truth, dip its point in honey."

"One always has time enough, if one will apply it well."

“One final paragraph of advice: do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am - a reluctant enthusiast....a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much; I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this; You will outlive the bastards.”

"Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life, and it is the main obstacle between you and a shitty first draft."

"Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught."

"Easy to know that diamonds are precious. Good to learn that rubies have depth. But more to see that pebbles are miraculous."

"When you slow down enough to sculpt, you discover all kinds of things you never noticed before."

"Sometimes life requires that we take jobs below our station until we learn skills, offer apologies even when we are wronged, suck-up to power when necessary, work long hours when we “deserve” some rest, risk embarrassment in front of witnesses, risk failure and humiliation, and get rejected by the people we hope to love. In that sort of game, the player unburdened with human dignity usually wins."

"When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. They are like this because they can’t tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own — not of the same blood or birth, but of the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine. And so none of them can hurt me. No one can implicate me in ugliness. Nor can I feel angry at my relative, or hate him. We were born to work together like feet, hands, and eyes, like the two rows of teeth, upper and lower. To obstruct each other is unnatural. To feel anger at someone, to turn your back on him: these are obstructions."

“But, when nothing subsists of an old past, after the death of people, after the destruction of things, alone, frailer but more enduring, more immaterial, more persistent, more faithful, smell and taste still remain for a long time, like souls, remembering, waiting, hoping, on the ruin of all the rest, bearing without giving way, on their almost impalpable droplet, the immense edifice of memory.”

“It was only a sunny smile, and little it cost in the giving, but like morning light it scattered the night and made the day worth living.”

“Music can pierce the heart directly; it needs no mediation.”

"As soon as human conception finds an adequate symbol, it grows like Jack’s beanstalk, and outgrows the highest reaches of what seemed such an adequate form of expression. The better the symbolism, the faster it has to grow, to keep up with the thought it serves and fosters. That is clearly demonstrated by language. A child with ten words to its credit has certainly more than ten concepts at its command, because every word lends itself at once to generalization, transfer of meaning, suggestion of related ideas, all sorts of subtle shades and variations created in use. The same thing holds for artistic expression. Just as language grows in subtlety, in syntactical forms and idioms as well as in vocabulary, so the power of articulation through sensuous form grows with the needs of the conceiving mind."

"The way you can go

isn’t the real way.

The name you can say

isn’t the real name.

Heaven and earth

begin in the unnamed:

name’s the mother

of the ten thousand things.

So the unwanting soul

sees what’s hidden,

and the ever-wanting soul

sees only what it wants.

Two things, one origin,

but different in name,

whose identity is mystery.

Mystery of all mysteries!

The door to the hidden."

“There is always something more than two opposing truths. The whole truth always includes a third part, which is the reconciliation.”

"Intellectual work sometimes, spiritual work certainly, artistic work always — these are forces that fall within its grasp, forces that must travel beyond the realm of the hour and the restraint of the habit. Nor can the actual work be well separated from the entire life. Like the knights of the Middle Ages, there is little the creatively inclined person can do but to prepare himself, body and spirit, for the labor to come — for his adventures are all unknown. In truth, the work itself is the adventure. And no artist could go about this work, or would want to, with less than extraordinary energy and concentration. The extraordinary is what art is about."

“Beauty always has an element of strangeness… simple, unintended, unconscious strangeness [which] gives it the right to be called beauty.”

“If you hear a voice within you say “ you cannot paint,” then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced."

"I give myself permission to just make for the sake of making without any thought to the outcome, which can be surprisingly hard. … What I would tell my younger self is this: There is no “right” way to make art. The only wrong is in not trying, not doing. Don’t put barriers up that aren’t there — just get to work and make something"

"The good life is lived best by those with gardens — a truth that was already a gnarled old vine in ancient Rome, but a sturdy one that still bears fruit. I don’t mean one must garden qua garden… I mean rather the moral equivalent of a garden — the virtual garden. I posit that life is better when you possess a sustaining practice that holds your desire, demands your attention, and requires effort; a plot of ground that gratifies the wish to labor and create — and, by so doing, to rule over an imagined world of your own."

 “I note the obvious differences, between each sort and type, but we are more alike, my friends, than we are unalike.”

"Walk through life

Beautiful more than anything

Stand in the sunlight

Walk through life

Love all the things

That make you strong,

be lovers, be anything

For all the people of

Earth

You have brothers

You love each other, change up

And look at the world

Now, it’s

Our’s, take it slow

We’ve got a long time, a long way

To go,

We have

Each other, and the

World,

Don’t be sorry

Walk on out through sunlight life

and know

We’re on the go

For love

To open

Our lives

To walk

Tasting the sunshine

of life."

"Nature’s particular gift to the walker, through the semi-mechanical act of walking — a gift no other form of exercise seems to transmit in the same high degree — is to set the mind jogging, to make it garrulous, exalted, a little mad maybe — certainly creative and suprasensitive, until at last it really seems to be outside of you and as if it were talking to you whilst you are talking back to it. Then everything gradually seems to join in, sun and the wind, the white road and the dusty hedges, the spirit of the season, whichever that may be, the friendly old earth that is pushing life firth of every sort under your feet or spell-bound in a death-like winter trance, till you walk in the midst of a blessed company, immersed in a dream-talk far transcending any possible human conversation. Time enough, later, for that…; here and now, the mind has shaken off its harness, is snorting and kicking up heels like a colt in a meadow."

CANTICLE 6

"Alone one is never lonely: the spirit

adventures, waking

In a quiet garden, in a cool house, abiding single there;

The spirit adventures in sleep, the sweet thirst-slaking

When only the moon’s reflection touches the wild hair.

There is no place more intimate than the spirit alone:

It finds a lovely certainty in the evening and the morning.

It is only where two have come together bone against bone

That those alonenesses take place, when, without warning

The sky opens over their heads to an infinite hole in space;

It is only turning at night to a lover that one learns

He is set apart like a star forever and that sleeping face

(For whom the heart has cried, for whom the frail hand burns)

Is swung out in the night alone, so luminous and still,

The waking spirit attends, the loving spirit gazes

Without communion, without touch, and comes to know at last

Out of a silence only and never when the body blazes

That love is present, that always burns alone, however steadfast."

Baloney Detection Kit

"Wherever possible there must be independent confirmation of the “facts.”

Encourage substantive debate on the evidence by knowledgeable proponents of all points of view.

Arguments from authority carry little weight — “authorities” have made mistakes in the past. They will do so again in the future. Perhaps a better way to say it is that in science there are no authorities; at most, there are experts.

Spin more than one hypothesis. If there’s something to be explained, think of all the different ways in which it could be explained. Then think of tests by which you might systematically disprove each of the alternatives.

Try not to get overly attached to a hypothesis just because it’s yours. It’s only a way station in the pursuit of knowledge. Ask yourself why you like the idea. Compare it fairly with the alternatives. See if you can find reasons for rejecting it. If you don’t, others will.

If whatever it is you’re explaining has some measure, some numerical quantity attached to it, you’ll be much better able to discriminate among competing hypotheses. What is vague and qualitative is open to many explanations.

If there’s a chain of argument, every link in the chain must work (including the premise) — not just most of them.

Occam’s Razor. This convenient rule-of-thumb urges us when faced with two hypotheses that explain the data equally well to choose the simpler. Always ask whether the hypothesis can be, at least in principle, falsified…. You must be able to check assertions out. Inveterate skeptics must be given the chance to follow your reasoning, to duplicate your experiments and see if they get the same result."

"There are sights too beautiful to swallow. They stay on the rim of the eye; it cannot contain them… We talk of drinking in a sight, but what of the excess that cannot be caught? So much goes by unseen… No matter how long I stayed outdoors, there was a world that would remain invisible to me, just at the cusp of perception, glimpsable only in fragments, as when the delphinium at dusk breathes back its unearthly, ultraviolet blue."

"I beg you, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer."

"The first step to take is to become aware that love is an art, just as living is an art; if we want to learn how to love we must proceed in the same way we have to proceed if we want to learn any other art, say music, painting, carpentry, or the art of medicine or engineering. What are the necessary steps in learning any art? The process of learning an art can be divided conveniently into two parts: one, the mastery of the theory; the other, the mastery of the practice. If I want to learn the art of medicine, I must first know the facts about the human body, and about various diseases. When I have all this theoretical knowledge, I am by no means competent in the art of medicine. I shall become a master in this art only after a great deal of practice, until eventually the results of my theoretical knowledge and the results of my practice are blended into one — my intuition, the essence of the mastery of any art. But, aside from learning the theory and practice, there is a third factor necessary to becoming a master in any art — the mastery of the art must be a matter of ultimate concern; there must be nothing else in the world more important than the art. This holds true for music, for medicine, for carpentry — and for love. And, maybe, here lies the answer to the question of why people in our culture try so rarely to learn this art, in spite of their obvious failures: in spite of the deep-seated craving for love, almost everything else is considered to be more important than love: success, prestige, money, power — almost all our energy is used for the learning of how to achieve these aims, and almost none to learn the art of loving."

"No one can build you the bridge on which you, and only you, must cross the river of life. There may be countless trails and bridges and demigods who would gladly carry you across; but only at the price of pawning and forgoing yourself. There is one path in the world that none can walk but you. Where does it lead? Don’t ask, walk!"

"When I returned the Segway, I told the guy at the rental place how I’d learned about all the incredible inspiration and innovation and work and skill that had gone into the Segway, all to make something that cost 10 times as much as a scooter and required a lesson from an expert to ride. He said something I cannot stop thinking about. 

“Yeah,” he said, “a bunch of really smart people got together, but you needed one dumb person in the room to keep things on the level.”"

"There is but one solution to the intricate riddle of life; to improve ourselves, and contribute to the happiness of others."

"Take a full look at the worst. Acknowledge the figures: the runaway birthdates, the irreversible extinctions and ruined habitats, the meaningless economies fueled by waste, the exported shooting wars and their cover causes… Then work at whatever comes to hand. Useful or not, it makes no difference. Jumping in is the only calculus that emergency ever allows."

“Old ideas in a new context, are essentially, new ideas.”

“Each day, we wake slightly altered, and the person we were yesterday is dead. So why, one could say, be afraid of death, when death comes all the time?”

"The Roman Stoics were well aware of the danger presented by a period that was free of setbacks. Seneca warned that “Although all things in excess bring harm, the greatest danger comed from excessive good fortune: it stirs the brain, invites the mind to entertain idle fancies, and shrouds in thick fog the distinction between falsehood and truth.” 1 When such a period ends, as it someday surely will, the setback that ends will seem much worse than it otherwise would."

“All meaning accrues in duration.”

"The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place."

"The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things — the beauty, the memory of our own past — are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshipers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never visited."

"An honorable human relationship — that is, one in which two people have the right to use the word “love” — is a process, delicate, violent, often terrifying to both persons involved, a process of refining the truths they can tell each other.

It is important to do this because it breaks down human self-delusion and isolation.

It is important to do this because in doing so we do justice to our own complexity.

It is important to do this because we can count on so few people to go that hard way with us."

"No matter how old a mother is she watches her middle-aged children for signs of improvement. It could not be otherwise for she is impelled to know that the seeds of value sown in her have been winnowed. She never outgrows the burden of love, and to the end she carries the weight of hope for those she bore. Oddly, very oddly, she is forever surprised and even faintly wronged that her sons and daughters are just people, for many mothers hope and half expect that their newborn child will make the world better, will somehow be a redeemer. Perhaps they are right, and they can believe that the rare quality they glimpsed in the child is active in the burdened adult."

“The world is not a prison house, but a kind of spiritual kindergarten where millions of of bewildered infants are trying to spell God with the wrong blocks.”

"One of the best things a man can bring into the world with him is a natural humility of spirit. About the next best thing he can bring, and they usually go together, is an appreciative spirit — a loving and susceptible heart."

"Let me seek then, the gift of silence and poverty, and solitude where everything I touch is turned into prayer, where the sky is my prayer, the birds are my prayer, the wind in the trees is my prayer, for god is in all."

"Usually the artist has two life-long companions, neither of his own choosing… — poverty and loneliness. To have a friend who understands and appreciates your work, one who never lets you down but who becomes more devoted, more reverent, as the years go by, that is a rare experience. It takes only one friend… to work miracles."

Good Bones

Life is short, though I keep this from my children.
Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine
in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,
a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways
I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least
fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative
estimate, though I keep this from my children.
For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.
For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,
sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world
is at least half terrible, and for every kind
stranger, there is one who would break you,
though I keep this from my children. I am trying
to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,
walking you through a real shithole, chirps on
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful.

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.