We are one of many appearances of the thing called Life; we are not its perfect image, for it has no perfect image except Life, and life is multitudinous and emergent in the stream of time.

If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water.

When the human mind exists in the light of reason and no more than reason, we may say with absolute certainty that Man and all that made him will be in that instant gone.

It has been said repeatedly that one can never, try as he will, get around to the front of the universe. Man is destined to see only its far side, to realize nature only in retreat.

If it should turn out that we have mishandled our own lives as several civilizations before us have done, it seems a pity that we should involve the violet and the tree frog in our departure.

The great artist, whether he be musician, painter, or poet, is known for this absolute unexpectedness.

It is a commonplace of all religious thought, even the most primitive, that the man seeking visions and insight must go apart from his fellows and love for a time in the wilderness.

The journey is difficult, immense. We will travel as far as we can, but we cannot in one lifetime see all that we would like to see or to learn all that we hunger to know.

Each one of us is a statistical impossibility around which hover a million other lives that were never destined to be born.

We cannot pluck a flower witout disturbing a star.

It is frequently the tragedy of the great artist, as it is of the great scientist, that he frightens the ordinary man.

Reality is, you know, the tip of an iceberg of irrationality that we've managed to drag ourselves up onto for a few panting moments before we slip back into the sea of the unreal.

The Brazilian poet Vinicius de Moraes wrote that beauty is fundamental. Well, with the poet's permission, so is courage.

Let the moment come when nothing is left but life, and you will find that you do not hesitate over the fate of material possessions.

I like girls, but I prefer having a girlfriend. I like having someone I can spoil.

The quiet that envelops space makes the beauty even more powerful, and I only hope that the quiet can one day spread to my country.

True peace can rarely be imposed from the outside; it must be born within and between communities through meetings and dialogue and then carried outward.

Almost anything is too much. I am trying in my poems to have the reader be the experiencer. I do not want to be there. It is not even a walk we take together.

Fame is a devil; obscurity is an Angel! Stay away from me, Devil; Come near to me, Angel!

It is not how much you make that counts, but how much money you keep.

Being cheerful keeps you healthy