We have to dare to be ourselves, however frightening or strange that self may prove to be.
The Fur Person learned then and there that it is better to be a philosopher than to be a king and that, all things considered, wisdom was to be preferred to power.
Where music thundered let the mind be still,Where the will triumphed let there be no will,What light revealed, now let the dark fulfill.
I am not ready to die,But I am learning to trust deathAs I have trusted life.I am movingToward a new freedom
For any writer who wants to keep a journal, be alive to everything, not just to what you’re feeling, but also to your pets, to flowers, to what you’re reading.
I feel more alive when I’m writing than I do at any other time–except maybe when I’m making love.
Anyone who is going to be a writer knows enough at fifteen to write several novels.
Public education was not founded to give society what it wants. Quite the opposite.
And now we who are writing women and strange monstersStill search our hearts to find the difficult answers,Still hope that we may learn to lay our handsMore gently and more subtly on the burning sands.
What does myself now say to me?”Open the door of Mystery.
A bolt that raised her heart to blazing heightAnd made the vertical the very thrust of hope,And found its path at last(Slow work of Grace).
…when the petals fallSay it is beautiful and good, say it is well
It is time I came back to my real lifeAfter this voyage to an island with no name,Where I lay down at sunrise drunk with light.
I can tell you that solitudeIs not all exaltation, inner spaceWhere the soul breaths and work can be done.Solitude exposes the nerve,Raises up ghosts.The past, never at rest, flows through it.
Keep busy with survival. Imitate the trees. Learn to lose in order to recover, and remember nothing stays the same for long, not even pain. Sit it out. Let it all pass. Let it go.
Everything in us presses toward decision, even toward the wrong decision, just to be free of the anxiety that precedes any big step in life.
Without darkness, nothing comes to birth, As without light, nothing flowers.
Wrinkles here and there seem unimportant compared to the Gestalt of the whole person I have become in this past year.
The most valuable thing we can do for the psyche, occasionally, is to let it rest, wander, live in the changing light of room, not try to be or do anything whatever.
Life comes in clusters clusters of solitude then clusters when there is hardly time to breathe.
Why is it that people who cannot show feeling presume that that is a strength and not a weakness?
Each day and the living of it has to be a conscious creation in which discipline and order are relieved with some play and pure foolishness.
Why is it that people who cannot show feeling presume that that is a strength and not a weakness?
Help us to be the always hopeful gardeners of the spirit who know that without darkness nothing comes to birth as without light nothing flowers.
It was completely fruitless to quarrel with the world whereas the quarrel with oneself was occasionally fruitful and always she had to admit interesting.
What is destructive is impatience haste expecting too much too fast.
There is a proper balance between not asking enough of oneself and asking or expecting too much.
There is a proper balance between not asking enough of oneself and asking or expecting too much.
For inside all the weakness of old age the spirit God knows is as mercurial as it ever was.
There is only one real deprivation… and that is not to be able to give one’s gifts to those one loves most.
The more articulate one is, the more dangerous words become.
Everything that slows us down and forces patience, everything that sets us back into the slow circles of nature, is a help. Gardening is an instrument of grace.
Help us to be ever faithful gardeners of the spirit, who know that without darkness nothing comes to birth, and without light nothing flowers.
No partner in a love relationship… should feel that he has to give up an essential part of himself to make it viable.
The garden is growth and change and that means loss as well as constant new treasures to make up for a few disasters.
A house that does not have one warm, comfy chair in it is soulless.
Loneliness is the poverty of self solitude is the richness of self.