To have passed through life and never experienced solitude is to have never known oneself. To have never known oneself is to have never known anyone.

August creates as she slumbers, replete and satisfied.

There are some optimists who search eagerly for the skunk cabbage which in February sometimes pushes itself up through the ice, and who call it a sign of spring. I wish that I could feel that way about it, but I do not. The truth of the matter, to me, is simply that skunk cabbage blooms in the winter time.

The most important part of our lives-our sensations, emotions, desires, and aspirations-takes place in a universe of illusions which science can attenuate or destroy, but which it is powerless to enrich.

Though we face the facts of sex we are more reluctant than ever to face the fact of death or the crueler facts of life, either biological or social.

February... Now more than ever one must remind oneself that it is wasteful folly to wish that time would pass, or - as the puritanical old saying used to have it - to kill time until it kills you.

Security depends not so much upon how much you have, as upon how much you can do without.