“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.”

“Alas, I am a woman friendless, hopeless!”

“He that commends me to mine own content Commends me to the thing I cannot get. I to the world am like a drop of water That in the ocean seeks another drop, Who, falling there to find his fellow forth, Unseen, inquisitive, confounds himself: So I, to find a mother and a brother, In quest of them, unhappy, lose myself.”

“There is no creature loves me;And if I die, no soul will pity me.”

“Two lovely berries moulded on one stem;So, with two seeming bodies, but one heart.”

“One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.”

“For thou hast given me in this beauteous face A world of earthly blessings to my soul, If sympathy of love unite our thoughts.”

“At times the whole world seems to be in conspiracy to importune you with emphatic trifles. Friend, client, child, sickness, fear, want, charity, all knock at once at thy closet door and say,—'Come out unto us.' But keep thy state; come not into their confusion. The power men possess to annoy me I give them by a weak curiosity. No man can come near me but through my act.”

“A man should carry nature in his head.”

“My crown is in my heart, not on my head; not decked with diamonds and Indian stones, nor to be seen: my crown is called content, a crown it is that seldom kings enjoy.”

“I am a true laborer: I earn that I eat, get that I wear, owe no man hate, envy no man's happiness, glad of other men's good, content with my harm.”

“Can anything be so elegant as to have few wants, and to serve them one's self?”

“Therefore all just persons are satisfied with their own praise. They refuse to explain themselves, and are content that new actions should do them that office. They believe that we communicate without speech, and above speech, and that no right action of ours is quite unaffecting to our friends, at whatever distance; for the influence of action is not to be measured by miles.”

“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.”

“There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

“The world leaves no track in space, and the greatest action of man no mark in the vast idea.”

“The astronomers said, 'Give us matter and a little motion and we will construct the universe. It is not enough that we should have matter, we must also have a single impulse, one shove to launch the mass and generate the harmony of the centrifugal and centripetal forces.' ... There is no end to the consequences of the act. That famous aboriginal push propagates itself through all the balls of the system, and through every atom of every ball.”