If you want to understand today, you have to search yesterday.

Now, five years is nothing in a man's life except when he is very young and very old... - Wang Lung

Love can never be a sin. It can be only a blessing. Even if you're not loved in return -- though I can't imagine that -- to love is a proof of life -- indeed, it's the only proof, for once you can't love another human being, you're not alive.

You are free when you gain back yourself,” Madame Wu said. “You can be as free within these walls as you could be in the whole world. And how could you be free if, however far you wander, you still carry inside yourself the constant thought of him? See where you belong in the stream of life. Let it flow through you, cool and strong. Do not dam it with your two hands, lest he break the dam and so escape you. Let him go free, and you will be free.

We must have hope or starve to death.

In this unbelievable universe in which we live, there are no absolutes. Even parallel lines, reaching into infinity, meet somewhere yonder.

When we define democracy now it must still be as a thing hoped for but not seen.