“Injustice makes the rules, and courage breaks them.”

The danger in trying to do good is that the mind comes to confuse the intent of goodness with the act of doing things well.

When you light a candle, you also cast a shadow.

That selfhood which is our torment, and our treasure, and our humanity, does not endure. It changes; it is gone, a wave on the sea. Would you have the sea grow still and the tides cease, to save one wave, to save yourself?

We will need writers who can remember freedom. Poets, visionaries-the realists of a larger reality.

It doesn’t have to be plugged in, activated, or performed by a machine; all it needs is light, a human eye, and a human mind. It is not one of a kind, and it is not ephemeral. It lasts. It is reliable.

The road goes upward towards the light; but the laden traveler may never reach the end of it.

We can change our life, our being; no matter what our will is, we are changed. As the moon changes yet is one, so we are virgin, wife, mother, grandmother.

What is the use trying to describe the flowing of a river at any one moment, and then at the next moment, and then at the next, and the next, and the next? You wear out. You say: There is a great river, and it flows through this land, and we have named it History.

You can go home again…so long as you understand that home is a place where you have never been.

Things don’t have purposes, as if the universe were a machine, where every part has a useful function. What’s the function of a galaxy?

The only questions that really matter are the ones you ask yourself.

You can’t crush ideas by suppressing them. You can only crush them by ignoring them. By refusing to think, refusing to change.

Translation is entirely mysterious. Increasingly I have felt that the art of writing is itself translating, or more like translating than it is like anything else.

We will not know our own injustice if we cannot imagine justice. We will not be free if we do not imagine freedom.

Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art. Very often in our art, the art of words.

The end justifies the means. But what if there never is an end? All we have is means.

Dancing of the autumn leaves on the surface of a lake is a dream we see when we are awake!

Wise man is the rooster of the universe: He awakens the unawake!

The mystics, knowing that man is involved in a hidden history of the cosmos, endeavor to awake from the drowsiness and apathy and to regain the state of wakefulness for their enchanted souls.

Awake, awake, my Lyre!And tell thy silent master’s humble taleIn sounds that may prevail;Sounds that gentle thoughts inspire

To awaken spiritual unity, and to spread to others the love that is our inherent nature, is the true goal of human life.

When winter withers – my bones begin to thaw, my lungs crackle as they expand, and the blood in my veins start to flow and I awaken from hibernation – hungry for happiness and eager to let go.

Here I am again, chasing shadows, as if I’m peter pan convincing Wendy not to grow up – I’m waiting for you in the between place. Dreaming and never quite awake.

Awakening is possible only for those who seek it and want it, for those who are ready to struggle with themselves and work on themselves for a very long time and very persistently in order to attain it.