Blessed is the man, 

who having nothing to say, 

abstains from giving wordy evidence of the fact.

Loss and possession, death and life are one, 

There falls no shadow where there shines no sun.

The good and the wise lead quiet lives.

It is not so much our friends' help that helps us, 

as the confidence of their help.

We are all apprentices in a craft 

where no one ever becomes a master.

Art is not what you see, 

but what you make others see.

The only real failure in life is 

not to be true 

to the best one knows.

We live in a fantasy world, 

a world of illusion. 

The great task in life is to find reality.

If you can speak what you will never hear, 

if you can write what you will never read, 

you have done rare things.

The time at our disposal each day is elastic; 

the passions we feel dilate it, 

those that inspire us shrink it, 

and habit fills it.

All tyranny needs to gain a foothold 

is for people of good conscience to remain silent.

Great art picks up where nature ends.

Belief in a cruel God makes a cruel man.

In argument 

similes are like songs in love; 

they describe much, 

but prove nothing.

If you do not change direction, 

you may end up where you are heading.

The time you enjoy wasting 

is not wasted time.

The first step to participation in the destiny of humanity today, 

which is neither of this folk nor of that, 

but of the whole population of the globe, 

is to recognise every such local image of a god 

as but one of many thousands, millions, even perhaps billions, 

of locally useful symbolisations 

of that same mystery 

beyond sight or thought 

which our teachers have taught us to seek 

in their god alone.

Nationalism is power hunger 

tempered by self-deception.

Mathematical reasoning may be regarded 

rather schematically 

as the exercise of a combination of two facilities, 

which we may call intuition and ingenuity.

Outside show is a poor substitute for inner worth.

Truth is so obscure in these times, 

and falsehood so established, 

that, unless we love the truth, 

we cannot know it.

He who wonders discovers 

that this in itself is wonder.

The supreme question 

about a work of art 

is 

out of how deep a life 

does it spring.

Think like a wise man 

but communicate in the language of the people.

The more sand has escaped from the hourglass of our life, 

the clearer we should see through it.

Let him that would move the world 

first move himself.

But what is happiness 

except the simple harmony 

between a man and the life he leads?

There is certainly no absolute standard of beauty. 

That precisely is what makes its pursuit so interesting.

The only thing that can save the world 

is the reclaiming of the awareness of the world. 

That's what poetry does.

The tree which moves some to tears of joy 

is in the eyes of others 

only a green thing that stands in the way. 

Some see nature all ridicule and deformity... 

and some scarce see nature at all. 

But to the eyes of the man of imagination, 

nature is imagination itself.

Rest satisfied with doing well, 

and leave others to talk of you as they will.

Every man's memory is his private literature.

Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought 

and the thought has found words.

You can discover more about a person 

in an hour of play 

than in a year of conversation.

It is reasonable to have perfection in our eye 

that we may always advance toward it, 

though we know it can never be reached.

A person may cause evil to others 

not only by his actions 

but by his inaction, 

and in either case 

he is justly accountable to them for the injury.

They who can give up essential liberty 

to obtain a little temporary safety 

deserve neither liberty nor safety.

Language is the house of the truth of Being.

Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself.

All great and beautiful work has come of first gazing without shrinking into the darkness.

Happiness is when 

what you think, 

what you say, 

and what you do 

are in harmony.

The whole of science, 

and one is tempted to think 

the whole of the life of any thinking man, 

is trying to come to terms 

with the relationship between yourself and the natural world. 

Why are you here, 

and how do you fit in, 

and what's it all about.

Everywhere I go 

I find that a poet has been there before me.

A man can be himself only so long as he is alone, 

and if he does not love solitude, 

he will not love freedom, 

for it is only when he is alone 

that he is really free.

When a truth is necessary, 

the reason for it can be found by analysis, 

that is, 

by resolving it into simpler ideas and truths 

until the primary ones are reached.

Not what we have 

but what we enjoy, 

constitutes our abundance.

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself 

and you are the easiest person to fool.

To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, 

the end to which every enterprise and labour tends, 

and of which every desire prompts the prosecution.

To care less for the truth 

than for what people think 

is a coward's part.