Perhaps middle age is or should be a period of shedding shells the shell of ambition the shell of material accumulations and possessions the shell of the ego.

The most exhausting thing in life is being insincere.

It takes as much courage to have tried and failed as it does to have tried and succeeded.

By and large, mothers and housewives are the only workers who do not have regular time off. They are the great vacationless class.

The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach - waiting for a gift from the sea.

Men kick friendship around like a football, but it doesn't seem to crack. Women treat it like glass and it goes to pieces.

I feel we are all islands - in a common sea.

A simple enough pleasure, surely, to have breakfast alone with one's husband, but how seldom married people in the midst of life achieve it.

My passport photo is one of the most remarkable photographs I have ever seen- no retouching, no shadows, no flattery-just stark me.

When I cannot write a poem, I bake biscuits and feel just as pleased.

Don't wish me happiness - I don't expect to be happy it's gotten beyond that, somehow. Wish me courage and strength and a sense of humor - I will need them all.

We did not decide to be born hence

I paved the path to the very place I don’t want to be. But passing the blame off to someone else doesn’t put me any place else.

Perhaps the most delightful friendships are those in which there is much agreement much disputation and yet more personal liking.

We think we listen, but very rarely do we listen with real understanding, true empathy. Yet listening, of this very special kind, is one of the most potent forces for change that I know.

New research into cognitive functioning - how the brain works - proves that bullet points are the least effective way to deliver important information.

A common currency imposes on us a duty to cooperate more on policy.

Plants are like people: they're all different and a little bit strange.

I've reached the moment where the movement of my thought interests me more than the thought itself.

A real education takes place, not in the lecture hall or library, but in the rooms of friends, with earnest frolic and happy disputation.

Jesus took the tree of death so you could have the tree of life.