The poet is an untier of knots, and love without words is a knot, and it drowns.

In the secret of night, my prayer climbs like the liana, My prayer is, and I am not. It grows, and I perish. I have only my hard breath, my reason and my madness. I cling to the vine of my prayer. I tend it at the root of the stalk of night.

You shall create beauty not to excite the senses but to give sustenance to the soul.

Now I am nothing but a veil; all my body is a veil beneath which a child sleeps.

Speech is our second possession, after the soul-and perhaps we have no other possession in this world.

What the soul is to the body, so is the artist to his people.

Let the radiance of my enthusiasms envelop the poor courtyard and the bare classroom. Let my heart be a stronger column and my goodwill purer gold than the columns and gold of rich schools.