Perhaps everything terrifying is deep down a helpless thing that needs our help.

This is the miracle that happens every time to those who really love: the more they give, the more they possess.

It is true that these mysteries are dreadful, and people have always drawn away from them. But where can we find anything sweet and glorious that would never wear this mask, the mask of the dreadful? Whoever does not, sometimes or other, give his full consent, his full and joyous consent to the dreadfulness of life, can never take possession of the unutterable abundance and power of our existence; can only walk on its edge, and one day, when the judgment is given, will have been neither alive nor dead.

Love and death are the great gifts that are given to us; mostly they are passed on unopened.

I don’t want to stand before you like a thing, shrewd, secretive. I want my own will, and I want simply to be with my will, as it goes toward action. And in the silent, sometimes hardly moving times, when something is coming near, I want to be with those who know secret things or else alone. I want to unfold. I don’t want to be folded anywhere, because where I am folded, there I am a lie.

What we do battle with is so small, what battles us is so large.

I want to unfold. I don’t want to stay folded anywhere, because where I am folded, there I am a lie.