“The trees reflected in the river – they are unconscious of a spiritual world so near to them. So are we.”

Our Creator would never have made such lovely days, and have given us the deep hearts to enjoy them, above and beyond all thought, unless we were meant to be immortal.

At no time are people so sedulously careful to keep their trifling appointments, attend to their ordinary occupations, and thus put a commonplace aspect on life, as when conscious of some secret that if suspected would make them look monstrous in the general eye.

The thing you set your mind on is the thing you ultimately become.

Families are always rising and falling in America.

It is a curious subject of observation and inquiry, whether hatred and love be not the same thing at bottom.

And there I sat, long long ago, waiting for the world to know me.

She had not known the weight until she felt the freedom.

To do nothing is the way to be nothing.

I have come to see the nonsense of attempting to describe fine scenery. There is no such possibility. If scenery could be adequately reproduced in words, there would have been no need of God’s making it in reality.

No man for any considerable period can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.

This above all: be true, be true, be true.

Ugliness without tact is horrible.

Easy reading is damn hard writing.

The greatest obstacle to being heroic is the doubt whether one may going to prove one’s self a fool.

Life is made up of marble and mud.

Sunlight is painting.

A madman’s ravings are absurd in relation to the situation in which he finds himself, but not in relation to his madness.

It is disgusting – Why must we have bodies?

Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance.

A man is involved in life, leaves his impress on it, and outside of that there is nothing.

Best not to know what’s waiting around the corner.

Mindfulness helps us get better at seeing the difference between what’s happening and the stories we tell ourselves about what’s happening, stories that get in the way of direct experience. Often such stories treat a fleeting state of mind as if it were our entire and permanent self.

The world is hard because people are soft.

Why should we build our happiness on the opinons of others, when we can find it in our own hearts?