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.

There seems to be so much more winter than we need this year.

I was taught that I had to 'master' subjects. But who can 'master' beauty, or peace, or joy?

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

The ordinary activities I find most compatible with contemplation are walking, baking bread, and doing laundry.

Pay close attention to objects, events and natural phenomenon that would otherwise get chewed up in the daily grind.

To be an American is to move on, as if we could outrun change. To attach oneself to place is to surrender to it, and suffer with it.