Lovers embrace that which is between them rather than each other.

Let your best be for your friend.

Would that I were a dry well, and that the people tossed stones into me, for that would be easier than to be a spring of flowing water that the thirsty pass by, and from which they avoid drinking.

A shy failure is nobler than an immodest success.

If it were not for guests all houses would be graves.

The bird has an honor that man does not have. Man lives in the traps of his abdicated laws and traditions; but the birds live according to the natural law of God who causes the earth to turn around the sun.

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.