Great joys make us love the world. Great sadnesses make us understand the world.

It is not our task to judge the worthiness of our path; it is our task to walk our path with worthiness.

Our brightest dreams and our greatest fears are just over the horizon.

It is not easy for a man to be as great as a mountain or a forest. But that is why the creator gave them to us as teachers. Now that I am old I Iook once more toward them for lessons, instead of trying to understand the ways of men. They tell me to be patient. They tell me I cannot change what is, I can only hope to change what will become. Let the grasses grow over our scars, they say, and let flowers bloom over our wounds.

Like children, the elders are a burden. But unlike children, they offer no hope or promise. They are a weight and an encumbrance and a mirror of our own mortality. It takes a person of great heart to see past this fact and to see the wisdom the elders have to offer, and so serve them out of gratitude for the life they have passed on to us.

We humans are destined to live with our feet on the earth and our heads in the heavens, and we can never be at peace because we are pulled both ways.

The Buddhists have a story about blind men trying to describe an elephant by feeling it's various parts, and each describes the elephant according to the part he touched. That is the way we can hope to know God.