“There are all kinds of silences and each of them means a different thing. There is the silence that comes with morning in a forest, and this is different from the silence of a sleeping city.”

If your hunch proves a good one, you were inspired; if it proves bad, you are guilty of yielding to thoughtless impulse.

You learn to watch other people, but you never watch yourself because you strive against loneliness. If you read a book, or shuffle a deck of cards, or care for a dog, you are avoiding yourself.

There are all kinds of silences and each of them means a different thing

I learned to watch, to put my trust in other hands than mine. And I learned to wander. I learned what every dreaming child needs to know — that no horizon is so far that you cannot get above it or beyond it.

After that, work and hope. But never hope more than you work

[Elephants] are less agile and physically less adaptable than ourselves.

Africa is never the same to anyone who leaves it and returns again. It is not a land of change, but it is a land of moods and its moods are numberless.

The world grows bigger as the light leaves it. There are no boundaries and no landmarks. The trees and the rocks and the anthills begin to disappear, one by one, whisked away under the magical cloak of evening.

The way to find a needle in a haystack is to sit down.

Never turn back and never believe that an hour you remember is a better hour because it is dead. Passed years seem safe ones, vanquished ones, while the future lives in a cloud, formidable from a distance.

It is just one of those preposterous things that men do like putting a dam across a great river, one tenth of whose volume could engulf the whole of mankind without disturbing the domestic life of a single catfish.

I learned what every dreaming child needs to know, that no horizon is so far you cannot get above it or beyond it.

When you have flown halfway across a desert, you experience the desperation of a sleepless man waiting for dawn which only comes when the importance of its coming is lost.

It is not fickle, but because it has mothered not only men, but races, and cradles not only cities, but civilizations – and seen them die, and seen new ones born again – Africa can be dispassionate, indifferent, warm, or cynical, replete with the weariness of too much wisdom.

A man can be riddled with malaria for years on end, with its chills and its fevers and its nightmares, but if one day he sees that the water from his kidneys is black, he knows he will not leave that place again, wherever he is, or wherever he hoped to be.

In view of this and other things, I demand forgiveness for being so obviously impressed with my own parents.

For art to be ‘unpolitical’ means only to ally itself with the ‘ruling’ group.

The powers that be understand that sexual freedom or liberation with any kind of joy means they are losing control.

In the country, weather is as important as food and sometimes means the difference between life and death.

When you get wet, it usually means something good.

Higher position means greater service and an apportunity to purely represent Srila Prabhupada. Hence our management must be based on humility and tolerance.

If this book has a lesson, it is that we are awfully lucky to be here-and by ‘we’ I mean every living thing. To attain any kind of life in this universe of ours appears to be quite an achievement.

Maybe…in a way, this coffee reminds me of something. Maybe…maybe only a philosopher or a mad man would make this connection, but it’s a little like life. I mean it’s powerful going down and that doesn’t even take into account the aftertaste, which really takes getting used to.

As any old Taoist walking out of the woods can tell you, simple-minded does not necessarily mean stupid.