Critique by creating.

What spirit is so empty and blind, that it cannot recognize the fact that the foot is more noble than the shoe, and skin more beautiful than the garment with which it is clothed?

If you knew how much work went into it, you wouldn't call it genius.

It is necessary to keep one's compass in one's eyes and not in the hand, for the hands execute, but the eye judges.

If I am more alive because love burns and chars me, as a fire, given wood or wind, feels new elation, it's that he who lays me low is my salvation, and invigorates the more, the more he scars me.

Beauty is the purgation of superfluities.

Trifles make perfection, and perfection is no trifle.

No thought is born in me that does not bear the image of death.

The sculpture is already complete within the marble block, before I start my work. It is already there, I just have to chisel away the superfluous material.

As when, O lady mine, With chiselled touchThe stone unhewn and coldBecomes a living mould, The more the marble wastes, The more the statue grows.

AS YOU GIVE OUT SO SHALL YOU RECEIVE.

To force oneself to believe and to accept a thing without understanding is political, and not spiritual or intellectual.

In direct confrontation, the [Japanese] women might yield like blades of grass -- and spring back just as quickly. One of them compared this flexibility to the Vietcong guerrillas…

If it took your authentic voice to get you there, it will take your authentic voice to keep you there. Your job is to keep listening.

For me, I want my kids to find their way. If they're interested in something, I want them to try it out.

Mama learned to laugh with them, before they could laugh at her, and to do it so well no one could be sure what she really thought or felt.

The most vital quality a soldier can possess is self-confidence.

The Providence that watches over the affairs of men works out of their mistakes, at times, a healthier issue than could have been accomplished by their wisest forethought.

There are 80,000 jobs in the wind energy industry right now. And you can quadruple that number, if you have the right policy in place to promote clean energy.

Let us confess it: evil strides the world.

Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand.