I purified my lips with sacred fire that I might speak of love, but when I opened my mouth to speak, I found myself mute.

love one another, but make not a bond of love: let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup. give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone, even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.

Then it is also in my heart to be worthy of your hate.

My loneliness was born when men praised my talkative faults and blamed my silent virtues.

And let it direct your passion with reason, that your passion may livethrough its own daily resurrection, and like the phoenix rise above its own ashes.

Yea, death and prison we mete out To small offenders of the laws, While honor, wealth, and full respect On greater pirates we bestow. To steal a flower we call mean. To rob a field is chivalry; Who kills the body he must die, Who kills the spirit he goes free.

Tenderness and kindness are not signs of weakness and despair, but manifestations of strength and resolution.