“Never give up, never escape, take everything in, and perhaps suffer, that’s not too awful either, but never, never give up.”

Here, beside this great black surface that is my desk, I feel as though I am on a desert island.

There are moments when I feel like giving up or giving in, but I soon rally again and do my duty as I see it: to keep the spark of life inside me ablaze.

We have to fight them daily, lake fleas, those many small worries about the morrow, for they sap our energies.

Life cannot be captured in a few axioms. And that is just what I keep trying to do. But it won’t work, for life is full of endless nuances and cannot be captured in just a few formulae.

I would be so exhausted by my determination that I had no strength left to do the actual work.

Every day I shall put my papers in order and every day I shall say farewell. And the real farewell, when it comes, will only be a small outward confirmation of what has been accomplished within me from day to day.

I think what weakens people most is fear of wasting their strength.

I don’t think I have nerves of steel, far from it, but I can certainly stand up to things. I am not afraid to look suffering straight in the eyes.

Despite everything, life is full of beauty and meaning.

The more peace there is in us, the more peace there will be in our troubled world.

If one burdens the future with one’s worries, it cannot grow organically. I am filled with confidence, not that I shall succeed in worldly things, but that even when things go badly for me I shall still find life good and worth living.

I know and share the many sorrows a human being can experience, but I do not cling to them; they pass through me, like life itself, as a broad eternal stream…and life continues.

It is the only thing we can do. Each of us must turn inward and destroy in himself all that he thinks he ought to destroy in others. And remember that every atom of hate that we add to this world makes it sill more inhospitable

That I should die next week, I would still be able to sit at my desk all week and study with perfect equanimity, for I know now that life and death make a meaningful whole.

The fact is I don’t lead a simple enough inner life. I indulge in excesses, bacchanalia of the spirit. Perhaps I identify too much with everything I read and study. Someone like Dostoevsky still shatters me.

Such words as ‘God’ and ‘Death’ and ‘Suffering’ and ‘Eternity’ are best forgotten. We have to become as simple and as wordless as the growing corn or the falling rain. We must just be.

Sets you free from all bondage and all seeking.

I’m newly widowed, so I’ve gone from having a life partner, and having another brain to make decisions with

I made a concerted effort, last year and this year, to get a range of characters

Every church needs to be able to answer two questions. First, what is our plan for making disciples? And second, does our plan work?

Desire is no light thing.

When we look at women, we have to look at the significance of their work in a different way from the way we look at it with men.

So that it looks like the character has literally vanished. That’s the way you have to leave them.

We should do most anything to advance the animal rights cause.