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"When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why they are poor, they call me a communist."
"The way to love anything is to realize that it might be lost."
"Use what seems like poison as medicine. Use your personal suffering as the path to compassion for all beings."
"The effect you have on others is the most valuable currency there is."
"What embitters the world is not excess of criticism, but absence of self-criticism."
"Fairy tales don’t tell children that dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children that dragons can be killed." (paraphrase)
Variant: "Fairy tales are more than true — not because they tell us dragons exist, but because they tell us dragons can be beaten." (variant paraphrase by Neil Gaiman)
(paraphrased from: "Fairy tales, then, are not responsible for producing in children fear, or any of the shapes of fear; fairy tales do not give the child the idea of the evil or the ugly; that is in the child already, because it is in the world already. Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon. Exactly what the fairy tale does is this: it accustoms him for a series of clear pictures to the idea that these limitless terrors had a limit, that these shapeless enemies have enemies in the knights of God, that there is something in the universe more mystical than darkness, and stronger than strong fear."
Variant: "Fairy tales are more than true — not because they tell us dragons exist, but because they tell us dragons can be beaten." (variant paraphrase by Neil Gaiman)
(paraphrased from: "Fairy tales, then, are not responsible for producing in children fear, or any of the shapes of fear; fairy tales do not give the child the idea of the evil or the ugly; that is in the child already, because it is in the world already. Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon. Exactly what the fairy tale does is this: it accustoms him for a series of clear pictures to the idea that these limitless terrors had a limit, that these shapeless enemies have enemies in the knights of God, that there is something in the universe more mystical than darkness, and stronger than strong fear."
"While it is well enough to leave footprints on the sands of time, it is even more important to make sure they point in a commendable
direction."
direction."
"We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience."
“Not everything that can be counted counts. And not everything that counts can be counted.”
"On the third day the friends of Christ coming at daybreak to the place found the grave empty and the stone rolled away. In varying ways they realized the new wonder; but even they hardly realized that the world had died in the night. What they were looking at was the first day of a new creation, with a new heaven and a new earth; and in a semblance of the gardener God walked again in the garden, in the cool not of the evening but the dawn."
"I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones."
"The truth is, indeed, that love is the threshold of another universe."
"What paralyzes life is lack of faith and lack of audacity. The difficulty lies not in solving problems but expressing them. And so we cannot avoid this conclusion: it is biologically evident that to gain control of passion and so make it serve spirit must be a condition of progress. Sooner or later, then, the world will brush aside our incredulity and take this step : because whatever is the more true comes out into the open, and whatever is better is ultimately realized. Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire."
"Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply."
"The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing."
“Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art.”
"The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits."
"If you want to work on your art, work on your life."
"There are two kinds of suffering. There is the suffering you run away from, which follows you everywhere, and there is the suffering you face directly, and in doing so become free."
"A strong nation, like a strong person, can afford to be gentle, firm, thoughtful, and restrained. It can afford to extend a helping hand to others. It is a weak nation, like a weak person, that must behave with bluster and boasting and rashness and other signs of insecurity."