“You can’t test courage cautiously.”

I break up through the skin of awareness a thousand times a day, as dolphins burst through seas, and dive again, and rise, and dive.

I come down to the water to cool my eyes. But everywhere I look I see fire; that which isn’t flint is tinder, and the whole world sparks and flames.

Every live thing is a survivor on a kind of extended emergency bivouac.

You’ve got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down.

There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by.

You do not have to sit outside in the dark. If, however, you want to look at the stars, you will find that darkness is necessary. But the stars neither require nor demand it.

We have not yet encountered any god who is as merciful as a man who flicks a beetle over on its feet.

One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time…give it, give it all, give it now.

People love pretty much the same things best. A writer looking for subjects inquires not after what he loves best, but after what he alone loves at all.

I would like to learn, or remember, how to live.

The universe was not made in jest but in solemn incomprehensible earnest.

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days.

The real and proper question is: why is it beautiful

It has always been a happy thought to me that the creek runs on all night, new every minute, whether I wish it or know it or care, as a closed book on a shelf continues to whisper to itself its own inexhaustible tale.

Books swept me away, this way and that, one after the other; I made endless vows according to their lights for I believed them.

The dedicated life is worth living. You must give with your whole heart.

I caution against beginning or ending a quotation with ellipses

One of the rules of caution is not to be too cautious.

There are successful scholars, public-spirited scholars, upright scholars, cautious scholars, and those who are merely petty men.

If I advocate cautious optimism it is not because I do not have faith in the future but because I do not want to encourage blind faith.

We’re tired of hearing politicians and priests and cautious reformers… coax us, ‘Be calm! Be patient! Wait!

The negative cautions of science are never popular.

A person from Northern Ireland is naturally cautious.

If one is forever cautious, can one remain a human being?