“Unless one is able to live fully in the present, the future is a hoax.”

“For a decision-the freest of my actions just happens like hiccups inside me or like a bird singing outside me.”

“If you awaken from this illusion, and you understand that black implies white, self implies other, life implies death - or shall I say, death implies life - you can conceive yourself. Not conceive, but feel yourself, not as a stranger in the world, not as someone here on sufferance, on probation, not as something that has arrived here by fluke, but you can begin to feel your own existence as absolutely fundamental. What you are basically, deep, deep down, far, far in, is simply the fabric and structure of existence itself.”

“No work or love will flourish out of guilt, fear, or hollowness of heart, just as no valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now.”

“It is a special kind of enlightenment to have this feeling that the usual, the way things normally are, is odduncanny and highly improbable. G.K.Chesterton once said that it is one thing to be amazed at gorgon or a griffin, creatures which do not exist; but it is quite another and much higher thing to be amazed at a rhinoceros or a giraffe, creatures which do exist and look as if they don't. This feeling of universal oddity includes a basic and intense wondering about the sense of things.”

“Love sees with the heart and not with mind.”

“Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.”

“Faster than spring-time showers comes thought on thought.”

“O gentle son, Upon the heat and flame of thy distemper, sprinkle cool patience.”

“Upon his royal face there is no note how dread an army hath enrounded him.”

“Keep cool: it will be all one a hundred years hence.”

“Rushing into action, you fail. Trying to grasp things, you lose them. Forcing a project to completion, you ruin what was almost ripe.”

“He who acts, spoils; he who grasps, lets slip.”

“Those who act will fail. Those who seize will lose.”

“Give thy thoughts no tongue.”

“What is thy sentence then but speechless death.”

“Give it an understanding, but no tongue.”