We cannot possess the truth fully until it has entered into the very substance of our life by good habits, and by a certain perfection of moral activity.

Let me say this before rain becomes a utility that they can plan and distribute for money. By "they" I mean the people who cannot understand that rain is a festival, who do not appreciate its gratuity, who think that what has no price has no value, that what cannot be sold is not real, so that the only way to make something actual is to place it on the market. The time will come when they will sell you even your rain. At the moment it is still free, and I am in it. I celebrate its gratuity and its meaninglessness.

... Nothing resembles reality less than the photograph. Nothing resembles substance less than its shadow. To convey the meaning of something substantial you have to use not a shadow but a sign, not the limitation but the image. The image is a new and different reality, and of course it does not convey an impression of some object, but the mind of the subject; and that is something else again.

Prayer and love are really learned in the hour when prayer becomes impossible and your heart turns to stone.

God Himself begins to live in me not only as my Creator but as my other and true self.

The peculiar grace of a Shaker chair is due to the fact that it was made by someone capable of believing that an angel might come and sit on it.

For the ones who are called saints by human opinion on earth may very well be devils, and their light may very well be darkness