On New Year's Day every calendar, large and small, has the same number of dates. But we soon learn that the years are of very different lengths.

Almost anything is enough to keep alive someone who wishes nothing for himself but time to write music.

Vermont tradition is based on the idea that group life should leave each person as free as possible to arrange his own life. This freedom is the only climate in which (we feel) a human being may create his own happiness. ... Character itself lies deep and secret below the surface, unknown and unknowable by others. It is the mysterious core of life, which every man or woman has to cope with alone, to live with, to conquer and put in order, or to be defeated by.

there's no such thing as luck. Nothing ever just happens to anybody. ... nothing can really happen to a person till he lets it happen.

You can't wish a body any worse luck than to get what he wants.

What better can any of us do than to reach for our own stars ... and know which they are?

...there are two ways to meet life; you may refuse to care until indifference becomes a habit, a defensive armor, and you are safe - but bored. Or you can care greatly, live greatly, until life breaks you on its wheel.