Great mother of big apples it is a pretty world.
There is really no such creature as a single individual; he has no more life of his own than a cast-off cell marooned from the surface of your skin.
I argued that physical discomfort is important only when the mood is wrong. Then you fasten on to whatever thing is uncomfortable and call that the cause. But if the mood is right, then physical discomfort doesn’t mean much.
All of us . . . have been formed by experiences that still inhabit us. Memory is not only a trip but also a structure. Recollections are not only stories retold but also aspects of present feeling. Our hopes at any given moment are fashioned by our previous disappointment. Our need to share pain is as strong as our quest for pleasure. Every pain that is not purely physical is also retrospective. Our need to make sense of our lives has continually to take account of all this.
If you’ve not been fed, be bread.
There is not one big cosmic meaning for all, there is only the meaning we each give to our life. . . . To seek a total unity is wrong. To give as much meaning to one’s life as possible is right to me.
I have had more trouble with myself than with any man I have ever met.
There is no way to peace. Peace is the way.
I shall tell you a great secret, my friend. Do not wait for the last judgement. It takes place every day.
You know you can never find out what’s happening from the company bulletin or the adult press. You know that. The king’s messengers are always telling you what they want you to know, for their own benefit. The evolutionary message, what’s really happening, has always come from outcasts.
Everything we come across is to the point.
The most instructive experiences are those of everyday life.
The sin against the Holy Spirit is the sin against new life, against self-emergence, against the Holy fecund innerness of each person. It can be committed quite as easily against oneself as against another.
You might as well fall flat on your face as lean over too far backward.
How desperately difficult it is to be honest with oneself. It is much easier to be honest with other people.
i spill my bright incalculable soul.
And what, after all, is the poem but the constant threading of a needle? You have used the same thread over and over, sewing clouds, sewing a damaged heart, perfecting the things you know well.
You can close your eyes to reality, but not to memories.
At times, although one is perfectly in the right, one’s legs tremble; at other times, although one is completely in the wrong, birds sing in one’s soul.
Everything is relevant. I call it loving.
Things don’t change, but by and by our wishes change.
