“Words are always getting conventionalized to some secondary meaning. It is one of the works of poetry to take the truants in custody and bring them back to their right senses.”

We taste and feel and see the truth. We do not reason ourselves into it.

Every conquering temptation represents a new fund of moral energy. Every trial endured and weathered in the right spirit makes a soul nobler and stronger than it was before.

There are no strangers here; Only friends you haven’t yet met.

Sometimes my feet are tired and my hands are quiet, but there is no quiet in my heart.

I broke my heart in two So hard I struck. What matter? for I know That out of rock, Out of a desolate source, Love leaps upon its course.

The mystical life is the centre of all that I do and all that I think and all that I write. I have always considered myself a voice of what I believe to be a greater renaissance – the revolt of the soul against the intellect.

Neither Christ nor Buddha nor Socrates wrote a book, for to do so is to exchange life for a logical process.

All empty souls tend toward extreme opinions.

Teaching is not filling up a pail, it is lighting a fire.

And wisdom is a butterfly And not a gloomy bird of prey.

Talent perceives differences; genius, unity.

We are closed in, and the key is turned / On our uncertainty.

People who lean on logic and philosophy and rational exposition end by starving the best part of the mind.

Take, if you must, this little bag of dreams, Unloose the cord, and they will wrap you round.

From our birthday, until we die, Is but the winking of an eye.

And pluck till time and times are done the silver apples of the moon the golden apples of the sun.

Agnostic is the Greek word, for the Latin word, for ignorant.

No birth is an accident, No experience is without meaning, and no life is without value.

The word ‘good’ has many meanings. For example, if a man were to shoot his grandmother at a range of five hundred yards, I should call him a good shot, but not necessarily a good man.

I don’t believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive.

It’s not the imbalances of life that will get you down-it’s doing meaningless things that aren’t taking you where you want to go.

Life was never meant to be safe. It was meant to be lived right to the end.

Men will surrender to the spirit of the age. They will say that if they had lived in our day, faith would be simple and easy. But in their day, they will say, things are complex; the Church must be brought up to date and made meaningful to the day’s problems.

What is a moderate interpretation of the text? Halfway between what it really means and what you’d like it to mean?