you can muffle the drum, and you can loosen the strings of the lyre, but who shall command the skylark not to sing?

The most solid stone in the structure is the lowest one in the foundation.

And if you sing though as angels, and love not the singing, you muffle man's ears to the voices of the day and the voices of the night.

Know, therefore, that from the greater silence I shall return... Forget not that I shall come back to you... A little while, a moment of rest upon the wind, and another woman shall bear me.

The giving and receiving of pleasure is a need and an ecstasy.

For thought is a bird of space, that in a cage of words may indeed unfold its wings but cannot fly.

My Soul gave me good counsel, teaching me to love what the people abhor and to show good will toward the one they hate. It showed me that Love is a property not of the lover but of the beloved. Before my Soul taught me, Love was for me a delicate thread stretched between two adjacent pegs, but now it has been transformed into a halo; its first is its last, and its last is its first. It encompasses every being, slowly expanding to embrace all that ever will be.