“But youth has a future. The closer he came to graduation, the more his heart beat. He said to himself: “This is still not life, this is only the preparation for life.”

Everywhere across whatever sorrows of which our life is woven, some radiant joy will gaily flash past.

Man is such a wondrous being that it is never possible to count up all his merits at once. The more you study him, the more new particulars appear, and their description would be endless.

As you pass from the tender years of youth into harsh and embittered manhood, make sure you take with you on your journey all the human emotions! Don’t leave them on the road, for you will not pick them up afterwards!

Perfect nonsense goes on in the world. Sometimes there is no plausibility at all

The more destruction there is everywhere, the more it shows the activity of town authorities.

The experience of ages has shown that a man who works on the land is purer, nobler, higher, and more moral… Agriculture should be at the basis of everything. That’s my idea.

For contemporary judgment does not recognize that much depth of soul is needed to light up the picture drawn from contemptible life and elevate it into a pearl of creation.

Nothing could be more pleasant than to live in solitude, enjoy the spectacle of nature, and occasionally read some book.

There are certain words which are nearer and dearer to a man than any others.

Let me warn you, if you start chasing after views, you’ll be left without bread and without views.

Everything resembles the truth, everything can happen to a man.

But wise is the man who disdains no character, but with searching glance explores him to the root and cause of all.

In the end dreams became his life, and his whole life thereafter took a strange turn: one might say he slept while waking and watched while asleep.

They don’t listen to me, they don’t hear me, they don’t see me.

How much savage coarseness is concealed in refined, cultivated manners.

Two turtle doves will show thee Where my cold ashes lie And sadly murmuring tell thee How in tears I did die.

So, what’s it like in the real world? Well, the food is better, but beyond that, I don’t recommend it.

Poems are not easy to start, and they’re not easy to finish. There’s a great pleasure in – I wouldn’t say ease, but maybe kind of a fascinated ease that accompanies the actual writing of the poem. I find it very difficult to get started.

Well we’re waiting here in Allentown For the Pennsylvania we never found For the promises our teachers gave If we worked hard If we behaved So the graduations hang on the wall But they never really helped us at all No they never taught us what was real.

God wants us to know that life is a series of beginnings not endings. Just as graduations are not terminations but commencements. Creation is an ongoing process and when we create a perfect world where love and compassion are shared by all suffering will cease.

When I was here there was still a requirement that students had to swim 50 yards to graduate…because Harry Elkins Widener had drowned with the sinking of the Titanic. And it made me very grateful at the time that he had not gone down in a plane crash.

If your uniform isn’t dirty, you haven’t been in the game.

Respect people with less power then you. I don’t care if you’re the most powerful cat in the room,

But the Princeton fellowship was somewhat more generous, since I had not actually won the Putnam competition… Thus Princeton became the choice for my graduate study location.