Gods suppressed become devils, and often it is these devils whom we first encounter when we turn inward.

The fates lead him who will; him who won't they drag.

A temple is a landscape of the soul.

For if anything is capable of making a poet of a literary man, it is my hometown love of the human, the living and ordinary.

You know, when real trouble comes your humanity is awakened. The fundamental human experience is that of compassion.

The first step to the knowledge of the wonder and mystery of life is the recognition of the monstrous nature of the earthly human realm as well as its glory, the realization that this is just how it is and that it cannot and will not be changed. Those who think they know how the universe could have been had they created it, without pain, without sorrow, without time, without death, are unfit for illumination.

The usual marriage in traditional cultures was arranged for by the families. It wasn't a person-to-person decision at all. . . . In the Middle Ages, that was the kind of marriage that was sanctified by the Church. And so the troubadour idea of real person-to-person Amor was very dangerous. . . . It is in direct contradiction to the way of the Church. The word AMOR spelt backwards is ROMA, the Roman Catholic Church, which was justifying marriages that were simply political and social in their character. And so came this movement validating individual choice, what I call following your bliss.