Forms of expression always appear turgid to those who do not share the emotions they represent.

I suppose every one must have reflected how primeval and how poetical are the things that one carries in one's pocket; the pocket-knife, for instance, the type of all human tools, the infant of the sword. Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about things in my pockets. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past.

How you think when you lose determines how long it will be until you win.

Gratitude, being nearly the greatest of human duties, is also nearly the most difficult.

Before the Roman came to Rye or out to severn strode, / The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road.

The great saint may be said to mix all his thoughts with thanks. All goods look better when they look like gifts.

[Buddhism and Christianity] are in one sense parallel and equal; as a mound and a hollow, as a valley and a hill. There is a sense in which that sublime despair is the only alternative to that divine audacity. It is even true that the truly spiritual and intellectual man sees it as sort of dilemma; a very hard and terrible choice. There is little else on earth that can compare with these for completeness. And he who does not climb the mountain of Christ does indeed fall into the abyss of Buddha.