The notion that a human being should be constantly happy is a uniquely modern, uniquely American, uniquely destructive idea.

I think instead [of happiness] we should be working for contentment... an inner sense of fulfillment that's relatively independent of external circumstances.

For, like the wind, the sun, or the flowing river, like a soaring man-of-war or a beetle under a stone, like a spider at a web or a crab scuttling sideways across a shore, Nimrod was free.

Every new morning, I write a grateful gratitude for the new grace.

When you tend to another's dying embers, you find both warmth and an increase in the glow of your own fire.

Stillness was most natural. To go on scrabbling and running and grasping after some kind of life was aberration

One fifth of the people are against everything all the time.

Beauty is an omnipresence of death and loveliness, a smiling sadness that we discern in nature and all things, a mystic communion that the poet feels.

You are within God. God is within you.

Concentration, Full Confidence, Pure Will. With these 3, what cannot be accomplished?

What's "God"? Well, you know, when you want something really bad and you close your eyes and you wish for it? God's the guy that ignores you.

Heart of a solider with a brain to teach your whole nation.