I have seen great beauty of spirit in some who were great sufferers. I have seen men, for the most part, grow better not worse with advancing years, and I have seen the last illness produce treasures of fortitude and meekness from most unpromising subjects.

Why love, if losing hurts so much? I have no answers anymore: only the life I have lived. Twice in that life I've been given the choice: as a boy and as a man. The boy chose safety, the man chooses suffering. The pain now is part of the happiness then. That's the deal.

if anyone present wishes to make me the subject of his wit, I am very much at his service--with my sword--whenever he has leisure.

The Christian idea of 'putting on Christ' is the whole of Christianity.

Why should your heart not dance?

The first demand any work of art makes upon us is to surrender. Look. Listen. Receive. Get yourself out of the way.

No good poem, however confessional it may be, is just a self-expression. Who on earth would claim that the pearl expresses the oyster?