It is no less difficult to write a sentence in a recipe than sentences in Moby Dick. So you might as well write Moby Dick.
There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by.
A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time.
In literary history, generation follows generation in a rage.
We live in all we seek.
One of the main reasons that it is so easy to march men off to war,says Ernest Becker, is that each of them feels sorry for the man next to him who will die.
It is ironic that the one thing that all religions recognize as separating us from our creator; our very self-consciousness; is also the one thing that divides us from our fellow creatures. It was a bitter birthday present from evolution.
I come down to the water to cool my eyes. But everywhere I look I see fire; that which isn’t flint is tinder, and the whole world sparks and flames.
How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.
Somewhere, and I can’t find where, I read about an Eskimo hunter who asked the local missionary priest, If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?No,said the priest, not if you did not know
I would like to learn, or remember, how to live.
I think the dying pray at the last not please but thank you as a guest thanks his host at the door
Experiencing the present purely is being empty and hollow; you catch grace as a man fills his cup under a waterfall.
She read books as one would breathe air, to fill up and live. She read books as one would breathe ether, to sink in and die.
Eskimo: If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?Priest: No, not if you did not know.Eskimo: Then why did you tell me?
Books swept me away, this way and that, one after the other; I made endless vows according to their lights for I believed them
Every book has an intrinsic impossibility, which its writer discovers as soon as his first excitement dwindles.
I had been chipping at the world idly, and had by accident uncovered vast and labyrinthine further worlds within it.
I woke at intervals until . . . the intervals of waking tipped the scales, and I was more often awake than not.
The dedicated life is worth living. You must give with your whole heart.
It could be that our faithlessness is a cowering cowardice born of our very smallness, a massive failure of imagination… If we were to judge nature by common sense or likelihood, we wouldn’t believe the world existed.
Nothing moves a woman so deeply as the boyhood of the man she loves.
Because how we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.
Having chosen this foolishness, I was a free being. How could the world ever stop me, how could I betray myself, if I was not afraid?
Crystals grew inside rock like arithmetic flowers. They lengthened and spread, added plane to plane in an awed and perfect obedience to an absolute geometry that even stones; maybe only the stones; understood.
I would like to learn, or remember, how to live.
You can’t test courage cautiously.
Caring passionately about something isn’t against nature, and it isn’t against human nature. It’s what we’re here to do.
You can’t test courage cautiously.
I noticed this process of waking, and predicted with terrifying logic that one of these years not far away I would be awake continuously and never slip back, and never be free of myself again.
There is a certain age at which a child looks at you in all earnestness and delivers a long, pleased speech in all the true inflections of spoken English, but with not one recognizable syllable.
It could be that our faithlessness is a cowering cowardice born of our very smallness, a massive failure of imagination… If we were to judge nature by common sense or likelihood, we wouldn’t believe the world existed.
No child on earth was ever meant to be ordinary, and you can see it in them, and they know it, too, but then the times get to them, and they wear out their brains learning what folks expect, and spend their strength trying to rise over those same folks.
The painter… does not fit the paints to the world. He most certainly does not fit the world to himself. He fits himself to the paint. The self is the servant who bears the paintbox and its inherited contents.
You’ve got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down.
We are here to witness the creation and to abet it.
Appealing workplaces are to be avoided. One wants a room with no view, so imagination can meet memory in the dark.
Your work is to keep cranking the flywheel that turns the gears that spin the belt in the engine of belief that keeps you and your desk in midair.
You can’t test courage cautiously.
I do not so much write a book as sit up with it, as a dying friend. I hold its hand and hope it will get better.
I think it would be well, and proper, and obedient, and pure, to grasp your one necessity and not let it go, to dangle from it limp wherever it takes you.
You can’t test courage cautiously, so I ran hard and waved my arms hard, happy.
Last forever!’ Who hasn’t prayed that prayer? You were lucky to get it in the first place. The present is a freely given canvas. That it is constantly being ripped apart and washed downstream goes without saying.
The real and proper question is: why is it beutiful?
I had been my whole life a bell, and never knew it until at that moment I was lifted and struck.
The secret of seeing is to sail on solar wind. Hone and spread your spirit, till you yourself are a sail, whetted, translucent, broadside to the merest puff.
The dedicated life is the life worth living. You must give with your whole heart.
There is a muscular energy in sunlight corresponding to the spiritual energy of wind.
As a life’s work, I would remember everything – everything, against loss. I would go through life like a plankton net.
I woke in bits, like all children, piecemeal over the years. I discovered myself and the world, and forgot them, and discovered them again.
As soon as beauty is sought not from religion and love, but for pleasure, it degrades the seeker.
Cruelty is a mystery and a waste of pain
Our life is a faint tracing on the surface of mystery.
I am a frayed and nibbled survivor in a fallen world, and I am getting along. I am aging and eaten and have done my share of eating too.
There is a certain age at which a child looks at you in all earnestness and delivers a long, pleased speech in all the true inflections of spoken English, but with not one recognizable syllable.
If we listened to our intellect, we’d never have a love affair. We’d never have a friendship. We’d never go into business, because we’d be too cynical. Well, that’s nonsense. You’ve got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down.
I woke at intervals until . . . the intervals of waking tipped the scales, and I was more often awake than not.
He judged the instant and let go; he flung himself loose into the stars.
What a hideout: Holiness lies spread and borne over the surface of time and stuff like color.
There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by.
The surest sign of age is loneliness.
As a life’s work, I would remember everything – everything, against loss. I would go through life like a plankton net.
Every book has an intrinsic impossibility, which its writer discovers as soon as his first excitement dwindles.
Appealing workplaces are to be avoided. One wants a room with no view, so imagination can meet memory in the dark.
If we were to judge nature by common sense or likelihood, we wouldn’t believe the world existed.
Spend the afternoon. You can’t take it with you.
The sense impressions of one-celled animals are not edited for the brain. This is philosophically interesting in a rather mournful way, since it means that only the simplest animals perceive the universe as it is.
There were no formerly heroic times, and there was no formerly pure generation. There is no one here but us chickens, and so it has always been.
The dedicated life is worth living. You must give with your whole heart.
One of the main reasons that it is so easy to march men off to war,says Ernest Becker, is that each of them feels sorry for the man next to him who will die.
Just once I wanted a task that required all the joy I had. Day after day I had noticed that if I waited long enough, my strong unexpressed joy would dwindle and dissipate inside me, like a fire subsiding . . . . Just this once I wanted to let it rip.
Crystals grew inside rock like arithmetic flowers. They lengthened and spread, added plane to plane in an awed and perfect obedience to an absolute geometry that even stones; maybe only the stones; understood.
I have never read any theologian who claims God is particularly interested in religion, anyway.
People love pretty much the same things best. A writer looking for subject inquires not after what he loves best, but after what he alone loves at all.
I noticed this process of waking, and predicted with terrifying logic that one of these years not far away I would be awake continuously and never slip back, and never be free of myself again.
We are here on the planet only once, and might as well get a feel for the place.
The answer must be, I think, that beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there.
The dedicated life is the life worth living. You must give with your whole heart.
How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.
The secret of seeing is to sail on solar wind. Hone and spread your spirit, till you yourself are a sail, whetted, translucent, broadside to the merest puff.
A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time.
He is careful of what he reads, for that is what he will write. He is careful of what he learns, for that is what he will know.
Spend the afternoon. You can’t take it with you.
Trees have a curious relationship to the subject of the present moment. There are many created things in the universe that outlive us, that outlive the sun, even, but I can’t think about them. I live with trees.
Why do we people in churches seem like cheerful, brainless tourists on a packaged tour of the Absolute?