To judge you by your failures is to cast blame upon the seasons for their inconstancy.

The optimist sees the rose and not its thorns; the pessimist stares at the thorns, oblivious to the rose.

Reason without learning is like the untilled soil, or like the human body that lacks nourishment.

Inspiration is in seeing a part of the whole with the part of the whole in you.

I have passed the mountain peak and my soul is soaring in the firmament of Complete and unbounded freedom; I am in comfort, I am in peace.

And now you ask in your heart, ‘How shall we distinguish that which is good in pleasure from that which is not good?’ Go to your fields and your gardens, and you shall learn that it is the pleasure of the bee to gather honey of the flower, But it is also the pleasure of the flower to yield its honey to the bee. For to the bee a flower is a fountain of life, And to the flower a bee is a messenger of love, And to both, bee and flower, the giving and the receiving of pleasure is a need and an ecstasy. * People of Orphalese, be in your pleasures like the flowers and the bees.

Happiness is a vine that takes root and grows within the heart, never outside it.