In seasons of tumult and discord bad men have most power; mental and moral excellence require peace and quietness.
By mourning tongues The death of the poet was kept from his poems.
Civilizations should be measured by the degree of diversity attained and the degree of unity retained.
We would rather be ruined than changed. We would rather die in our dread than climb the cross of the moment and let our illusions die.
My deepest feeling about politicians is that they are dangerous lunatics to be avoided when possible and carefully humored; people, above all, to whom one must never tell the truth.
We are all here on earth to help others; what on earth the others are here for I don't know.
All that we are not stares back at what we are.
Funerals are important rituals. They don't just recognize that a life has ended; they recognize that a life was lived.
An enemy to whom you show kindness becomes your friend.
The ego must be able to listen attentively and to give itself, without any further design or purpose, to that inner urge toward growth. . . . People living in cultures more securely rooted than our own have less trouble in understanding that it is necessary to give up the utilitarian attitude of conscious planning in order to make way for the inner growth of the personality.
We have moments of such clarity, of such appreciation of the incredible web of interconnected events that carry us from breath to breath, day to day, as long as we live-and the next moment we fret about how much we weigh. Or who we didn't send a Valentine. Or who forgot to compliment the dinner. Or whatever.