“You know what love is?It is all kindness, generosity.”

“Without the frown of clouds and lightning, the vines would be burned by the smiling sun.”

“This is not a day for asking questions, not a day on any calendar. This day is conscious of itself. This day is a lover, bread, and gentleness, more manifest than saying can say.”

“This being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival. Welcome and entertain them all!”

“From cane reeds, sugar. From a worm's cocoon, silk. Be patient if you can, and from sour grapes will come something sweet.”

“If a man fasten his attention on a single aspect of truth and apply himself to that alone for a long time, the truth becomes distorted and not itself but falsehood.”

“The objection to conforming to usages that have become dead to you is, that it scatters your force.”

“The one prudence in life is concentration; the one evil is dissipation: and it makes no difference whether our dissipations are coarse or fine; property and its cares, friends and a social habit, or politics, or music, or feasting. Everything is good which takes away one plaything and delusion more, and drives us home to add one stroke of faithful work.”

“O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo? Deny thy father and refuse thy name; Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love... 'Tis but thy name that is my enemy;What's in a name? that which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet.”

“What is light, if Sylvia be not seen? What is joy if Sylvia be not by?”

“The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deemFor that sweet odour which doth in it live.”

“What light through yonder window breaks?”

“Earth-treading stars that make dark heaven light”

“The glowworm shows the matin to be near And gins to pale his uneffectual fire.”

“I have been long a sleeper; but I trustMy absence doth neglect no great designWhich by my presence might have been concluded.”

“It is not night when I do see your face, Therefore I think I am not in the night; Nor doth this wood lack worlds of company, For you in my respect are all the world: Then how can it be said I am alone, When all the world is here to look on me?”

“In the presence of nature, a wild delight runs through the man, in spite of real sorrows.”

“Who could be so lucky? Who comes to a lake for water and sees the reflection of moon.”

“Those who don't feel this love pulling them like a river, those who don't drink dawn like a cup of springwater or take in sunset like a supper, those who don't want to change, let them sleep.”

“Silenceis an ocean. Speech is a river.When the ocean is searching for you, don't walkinto the language-river. Listen to the ocean,and bring your talky business to an end.Traditional words are just babblingin that presence, and babbling is a substitutefor sight.”

“Things are often spoke and seldom meant.”

“"Fair, kind, and true" is all my argument,"Fair, kind, and true" varying to other words;And in this change is my invention spent,Three themes in one, which wondrous scope affords.”

“Who has a book of all that monarchs do, He's more secure to keep it shut than shown; For vice repeated is like the wand'ring wind, Blows dust in others' eye, to spread itself; And yet the end of all is bought thus dear, The breath is gone, and the sore eyes see clear To stop the air would hurt them.”