Give me the gift of a listening heart.

The first step in the acquisition of wisdom is silence, the second listening, the third memory, the fourth practice, the fifth teaching others.

Your own soul is nourished when you are kind; it is destroyed when you are cruel.

A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.

Words kill, words give life; they're either poison or fruit--- YOU choose.

The human mind is an organ for the discovery of truths rather than of falsehoods.

The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.

Love is as strong as death; its jealousy as unyielding as the grave. It burns like a blazing fire; like a mighty flame. Many waters cannot quench love, rivers cannot wash it away

The lesser of two evils is still evil.

Most social acts have to be understood in their setting, and lose meaning if isolated.

most social acts have to be understood in their setting, and lose meaning if isolated. No error in thinking about social facts is more serious than the failure to see their place and function.

Nature is beautiful in all its chaos. However, a nature photograph is beautiful only in the absence of chaos.

Let's live in a joy.

My double drags his coffin, humble slave, I, at least, am real, though changed to flesh.Far-off, I build me a church no hand can shape("Winter Sonnets: III")

The best part about being alone is that you really don't have to answer to anybody. You do what you want.

The more accurately one can illuminate a particular human experience, the better the work of art.

An idea is always a generalization, and generalization is a property of thinking. To generalize means to think.

This is my father. Try what you can with him! He won't listen to me, because he remembers what a fool I was when I was a baby.

Music is one of the closest link-ups with God that we can probably experience. I think it's a common vibrating tone of the musical notes that holds all life together.

We ascend to the heights of contemplation by the steps of action.

Don't tell me that you have exhausted Life. When a man says that, one knows that life has exhausted him.