There is risk and truth to yourselves and the world before you.

Hope is not optimism, which expects things to turn out well, but something rooted in the conviction that there is good worth working for.

Believe that a further shore is reachable from here.

Even if the hopes you started out with are dashed, hope has to be maintained.

Anyone with gumption and a sharp mind will take the measure of two things: what's said and what's done.

I can't think of a case where poems changed the world, but what they do is they change people's understanding of what's going on in the world.

If you have the words, there's always a chance that you'll find the way.

History says, Don’t hope On this side of the grave, But then, once in a lifetime The longed-for tidal wave Of justice can rise up, And hope and history rhyme

Poetry is always slightly mysterious, and you wonder what is your relationship to it.

All I know is a door into the dark

I have begun to think of life as a series of ripples widening out from an original center.

If nothing else, it's pleasant to consider the possibility. He likes the thought of ships moving over the water, toward another world just out of sight.

When everything is lonely I can be my best friend.

I don't have a drinking problem. I drink. I get drunk. I fall down, no problem.

Good news comes in large packages

We limit ourselves so much. And, we limit heaven too. We think it's a place where angels just play harps. And hell has to be fire and brimstone. But that's very untrue.

It is fitting that at this solemn moment we take the pledge of dedication to the service of India and her people and to the still larger cause of human ity.

People with a lot of theological study and no prayer life are dangerous... and not in a good way.

I lost my mother when I was very young, and my father when I was in college.

And the goal really is to make the audience laugh, to bring them some joy.