The catalog of emotion that disappears when someone dies, and the degree to which we rely on a few people to record something of what life was to them, is almost too much to bear.

Those who claim to write about something larger and more significant than the self sometimes fail to comprehend the dimensions of self.

Chair or no chair: a binary relation. But the vicissitudes of moving the body around are infinite. You never know what a person in a chair can do.

Around you move many seas. It is impossible not to drown a little.

If you think something's happened quickly, you're looking at only a part of it.

Perhaps all anxiety might derive from a fixation on moments - an inability to accept life as ongoing.

Time punishes us by taking everything, but it also saves us - by taking everything

You can't learn from remembering. You can't learn from guessing. You can learn only from moving forward at the rate you are moved, as brightness into brightness.

The more you talk about something, the less accurate it gets.

I don't write toward a genre, and I try not to make claim to a genre after a book is published. That said, The Guardians isn't poetry. It's prose.

This is suffering's lesson: pay attention. The important part might come in a form you do not recognize.

Stay humble and inherit greatness, wise and inherit eternal life

I am determined that never, if I can help it, Shall evil triumph over good." - Creon

You are totally at the mercy of nature in this country, mate. It's just a fact of life.

There is no greater excitement than to support an intellectual wife and have her support you. Marriage is a partnership in which each inspires the other, and brings fruition to both of you.

As a result of my philosophy, I wasn't even upset about Hitler. I was willing to go to war to knock him off, but I didn't hate him. I hated what he was doing.

A house cannot be made habitable in a day; and, after all, how few days go to make up a century.

God grant, if we must have two eyes, that they may be both clear ones, one the eye of faith wholly fixed on Christ, the other the eye of obedience equally and wholly fixed on the same objective!

The first mark of intelligence, to be sure, is not to start things; the second mark of intelligence is to pursue to the end what you have started.

The reason I love the sea I cannot explain - it's physical. When you dive you begin to feel like an angel. It's a liberation of your weight.

To sanctify God is to reverence Him in our hearts, and to represent Him in the glory of His holiness before men.