... whatever is not happening now is unimportant; it is merely curious.

Until the missing story of ourselves is told, nothing besides told can suffice us: we shall go on quietly craving it.

Nature is what you don't have to trouble about. It looks after itself.

Poetry brings all possible experience to the same degree: a degree in the consciousness beyond which the consciousness itself cannot go.

I met God. 'What,' he said, 'you already?' 'What,' I said, 'you still?

In religion is much tiredness of people, a giving over of their doing to Someone Else.

People get wisdom from thinking, not from learning.

Truth rings no bells.

Woman has two works to perform: a work of differentiation, of man from herself, and a work of unification, of man with herself. ... We, woman, are now entering upon our second work.

My function as a writer is not story-telling but truth-telling: to make things plain.

I believe that misconceptions about oneself that one does not correct where possible act as a bad magic.

The only way to make life fruitful is by being productive

She lived in happy solitude, and grew old, and never worried when her beauty faded, for in her reflection she always saw a free woman.

​Till mirrors were Invented, Face was not You, Not Even part of Your Performance.

What, whom we put our hope in determines our stability!" EL

Civility is not a specific code of behavior as much as it is a call to unrelenting preemptive thought, and steady effort to care about influence on others.

Only He who really lived a human life (and I presume that only one did) can fully taste the horror of death.

It's really American to avoid paying taxes, legally.

It is simple impertinence for any man, or any body of men, to begin, or to contemplate, reform of the whole world.

How would we feel if you could pay extra to smoke on airplanes? When we decide something is a bad idea in general for society, we don't want the rich to be able to buy their way out of it.

We're all right, you know,' he says quietly. 'You and me. Okay?' My chest aches, and I nod. 'Nothing else is all right.' His whisper tickles my cheek. 'But we are.