“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.”

“Now, my masters, happy man be his dole, say I; every man to his business.”

“But earthlier happy is the rose distill'dThan that which withering on the virgin thornGrows, lives, and dies in single blessedness.”

“What e'er thou art, act well thy part.”

“Come unto these yellow sands, And then take hands. Curtsied when you have and kissed The wild waves whist, Foot is featly here and there; And, sweet sprites, the burden bear. Ariel's song, scene II, Act I”

“When you do dance, I wish you a wave o' the sea, that you might ever do nothing but that.”

“Dance, when you're broken open. Dance, if you've torn the bandage off. Dance in the middle of the fighting. Dance in your blood. Dance when you're perfectly free.”

“Sit by my side, and let the world slip: we shall ne'er be younger.”

“The world when seen through a little child's eyes, greatly resembles paradise. Happiness is doing with a smile what you have to do anyway. This time, like all time, is a very good one if we but know what to do with it.”

“This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.”

“I love a ballad but even too well if it be doleful matter merrily set down, or a very pleasant thing indeed and sung lamentably.”

“The horn, the horn, the lusty horn Is not a thing to laugh to scorn.”

“I am never merry when I hear sweet music.”