“When you find out that there was never anything in the dark side to be afraid of, Nothing is left but to love.”

My death will be the disappearance of a particular pattern in the water.

The morning glory which blooms for an hour differs not at heart from the giant pine, which lives for a thousand years.

Only doubtful truths need defense.

The more we try to live in the world of words, the more we feel isolated and alone, the more all the joy and liveliness of things is exchanged for mere certainty and security.

You are that vast thing that you see far, far off with great telescopes.

Words can be communicative only between those who share similar experiences.

Playing a violin is, after all, only scraping a cat’s entrails with horsehair.

What we have forgotten is that thoughts and words are conventions, and that it is fatal to take conventions too seriously.

Every intelligent individual wants to know what makes him tick, and yet is at once fascinated and frustrated by the fact that oneself is the most difficult of all things to know.

You do not play a sonata in order to reach the final chord, and if the meanings of things were simply in ends, composers would write nothing but finales.

You are an aperture through which the universe is looking at and exploring itself.

This is the real secret of life – to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play.

Through our eyes, the universe is perceiving itself. Through our ears, the universe is listening to its harmonies. We are the witnesses through which the universe becomes conscious of its glory, of its magnificence.

The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.

Reality is only a Rorschach ink-blot.

For there is never anything but the present, and if one cannot live there, one cannot live anywhere.

Proud people breed sad sorrows for themselves. But if you be afraid of your touchiness, you must ask pardon, mind, when she comes in.

Once you start a working on something, don’t be afraid of failure and don’t abandon it. People who work sincerely are the happiest.

I was raised on the mountains, and you thought I’d be afraid of a little thunder?

Some of us are afraid of dying; others of human loneliness. Profane was afraid of land or seascapes like this, where nothing else lived but himself.

I am afraid that if you want to go down into history you’ll have to do something for it.

I am not afraid of storms for I am learning how to sail my ship.

I’m so despondent about everything. Everything I try goes totally wrong. There’s no escape from this hole here. I feel drained. So far, I still haven’t found a real purpose in life. Sometimes, I’m afraid to get out of bed in the morning. There’s nothing to get up for.

And how have I lived? Frankly and openly, though crudely. I have not been afraid of life. I have not shrunk from it. I have taken it for what it was at its own valuation. And I have not been ashamed of it. Just as it was, it was mine.