Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you.

At night I read and write, and things I have never understood become clear; I reap the harvest of the rest of the year's planting

If I actually believed that the progress of human understanding depended on our crop of contemporary novelists, I would shoot myself.

The creatures I seek do not want to be seen.

Don't save something good for a later place. Don't hold back from your students, from the poor, don't try to keep anything for yourself 'cause it'll turn to ashes.

Whenever there is stillness there is the still small voice, God's speaking from the whirlwind, nature's old song, and dance.

There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by. A life of good days lived in the senses is not enough. The life of sensation is the life of greed; it requires more and more. The life of the spirit requires less and less; time is ample and its passage sweet. Who would call a day spent reading a good day? But a life spent reading -- that is a good life.