Spring seems far off, impossible, but it is coming. Already there is dusk instead of darkness at five in the afternoon; already hope is stirring at the edges of the day.

Poets and monks... We're both sort of peripheral to the world.

They are fruit and transport: ripening melons, prairie schooners journeying under full sail.

I sense that striving for wholeness is, increasingly, a countercultural goal, as fragmented people make for better consumers.

You can only see one thing clearly, and that is your goal. Form a mental vision of that, and cling to it through thick and thin.

Before you begin a thing, remind yourself that difficulties and delays quite impossible to foresee are ahead. If you could see them clearly, naturally you could do a great deal to get rid of them but you can't. You can only see one thing clearly and that is your goal. Form a mental vision of that and cling to it through thick and thin.

Each and every one of us has one obligation, during the bewildered days of our pilgrimage here: the saving of his own soul, and secondarily and incidentally thereby affecting for good such other souls as come under our influence.