Simplicity is the whole secret of well-being.

In zazen, one is one's present self, what one was, and what one will be, all at once.

I ... had what Kierkegaard called 'the sickness of infinitude,' wandering from one path to another with no real recognition that I was embarked upon a search, and scarcely a clue as to what I might be after. I only knew that at the bottom of each breath there was a hollow place that needed to be filled.

My eye is fixed not on the ending of the book but on the feeling of that ending.

You see ... a man like me, a cautious man, has his life all figured out according to a pattern, and then the pattern flies apart. You run around for quite a while trying to repair it, until one day you straighten up again with an armful of broken pieces, and you see that the world has gone on without you and you can never catch up with your old life, and you must begin all over again.

If we were doomed to live forever, we would scarcely be aware of the beauty around us.

The concept of conservation is a far truer sign of civilization than that spoilation of a continent which we once confused with progress.