“Dreams shed light on the dim places where reason itself has yet to voyage.”

You cannot be protected from the things that frighten you and hurt you, but if you identify with the part of your being that is responsible for transformation, then you are always the equal, or more than the equal of the things that frighten you.

Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street.

So, listen, to yourself and to those with whom you are speaking. Your wisdom then consists not of the knowledge you already have, but the continual search for knowledge, which is the highest form of wisdom.

When existence reveals itself as existentially intolerable, thinking collapses in on itself. In such situations – in the depths—it’s noticing, not thinking, that does the trick.

Life is indistinguishable from effortful maintenance.

You’re not perfect just the way you are. You could be better!

Untruth corrupts the soul and the state alike, and one form of corruption feeds the other.

You’re going to pay a price for every bloody thing you do and everything you don’t do. You don’t get to choose to not pay a price. You get to choose which poison you’re going to take. That’s it.

Who cares if you are the prime minister of Canada when someone else is the president of the United States?

Every bit of learning is a little death. Every bit of new information challenges a previous conception, forcing it to dissolve into chaos before it can be reborn as something better. Sometimes such deaths virtually destroy us.

We believe that in reducing the scope and importance of our errors, we are properly humble; in truth, we are merely unwilling to bear the weight of our true responsibility.

To suffer terribly and to know yourself as the cause: that is Hell.

It is not virtuous to be victimized by a bully, even if that bully is oneself.

If you don’t say what you think then you kill your unborn self.

It’s appropriate and praiseworthy to associate with people whose lives would be improved if they saw your life improve.

Perhaps you are overvaluing what you don’t have and undervaluing what you do.

The better ambitions have to do with the development of character and ability, rather than status and power. The status you can lose. You carry character with you wherever you go, and it allows you to prevail against adversity.

If you are a dreamer come sit by my fire, for we have some flax-golden tails to spin, come in, come in.

May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you’re wonderful.

A book is a dream that you hold in your hands.

Will I ever rise above the shackles of my mundane reality? I know I could fly as high as dreams.

That which is dreamed can never be lost, can never be undreamed.

Things need not have happened to be true. Tales and dreams are the shadow-truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes and forgot.

But we can aim too high. Or too low. Or too chaotically. So we fail and live in disappointment, even when we appear to others to be living well.