I don't know Who--or what--put the question, I don't know when it was put. I don't even remember answering. But at some moment I d...id answer Yes to Someone--or Something--and from that hour I was certain that existence is meaningful and that, therefore, my life, in self-surrender, had a goal.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When I converse with a profound mind, or if at any time being alone I have good thoughts, I do not at once arrive at satisfactions..., as when, being thirsty, I drink water, or go to the fire, being cold: no! but I am first apprised of my vicinity to a new and excellent region of life. By persisting to read or to think, this region gives further sign of itself, as it were in flashes of light, in sudden discoveries of its profound beauty and repose, as if the clouds that covered it parted at intervals, and showed the approaching traveller the inland mountains, with the tranquil eternal meadows spread at their base, whereon flocks graze, and shepherds pipe and dance.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A cultivated style would be like a mask. Everybody knows it's a mask, and sooner or later you must show yourself--or at least, you... show yourself as someone who could not afford to show himself, and so created something to hide behind.... You do not create a style. You work, and develop yourself; your style is an emanation from your own being.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There is something to be said for losing one's possessions, after nothing can be done about it. I had loved my Nanking home and th...e little treasures it had contained, the lovely garden I had made, my life with friends and students. Well, that was over. I had nothing at all now except the old clothes I stood in. I should have felt sad, and I was quite shocked to realize that I did not feel sad at all. On the contrary, I had a lively sense of adventure merely at being alive and free, even of possessions. No one expected anything of me. I had no obligations, no duties, no tasks. I was nothing but a refugee, someone totally different from the busy young woman I had been.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
But [Jonas] quickly understood that a disciple was not necessarily someone who wishes to learn something. More often, on the contr...ary, one became a disciple for the unselfish pleasure of teaching one's master.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Any man who can write a page of living prose adds something to our life, and the man who can, as I can, is surely the last to rese...nt someone who can do it even better. An artist cannot deny art, nor would he want to. A lover cannot deny love.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
For character too is a process and an unfolding ... among our valued friends is there not someone or other who is a little too sel...f confident and disdainful; whose distinguished mind is a little spotted with commonness; who is a little pinched here and protruberent there with native prejudices; or whose better energies are liable to lapse down the wrong channel under the influence of transient solicitations?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Poetry is either something that lives like fire inside you--like music to the musician or Marxism to the Communist--or else it is ...nothing, an empty formalized bore around which pedants can endlessly drone their notes and explanations.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »