Happiness is as a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but which if you will sit down read more

Happiness is as a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but which if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.

I do not want a plain box, I want a sarcophagus
With tigery stripes, and a face on it
Round read more

I do not want a plain box, I want a sarcophagus
With tigery stripes, and a face on it
Round as the moon, to stare up.
I want to be looking at them when they come
Picking among the dumb minerals, the roots.
I see them already-the pale, star-distance faces.
Now they are nothing, they are not even babies.
I imagine them without fathers or mothers, like the first gods.
They will wonder if I was important.

to be nobody-but-myself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make me everybody else means, read more

to be nobody-but-myself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make me everybody else means, to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting.

Unexplained joy is always so keen that... it seems to hold enough to reconcile one to the inevitable.

Unexplained joy is always so keen that... it seems to hold enough to reconcile one to the inevitable.

There is no aphrodisiac like innocence.

There is no aphrodisiac like innocence.

All pain is either severe or slight, if slight, it is easily endured; if severe, it will without doubt be read more

All pain is either severe or slight, if slight, it is easily endured; if severe, it will without doubt be brief.

Negation is the mind's first freedom, yet a negative habit is fruitful only so long as we exert ourselves to read more

Negation is the mind's first freedom, yet a negative habit is fruitful only so long as we exert ourselves to overcome it, adapt it to our needs; once acquired it can imprison us.

I have often thought what a melancholy world this would be without children, and what an inhuman world without the read more

I have often thought what a melancholy world this would be without children, and what an inhuman world without the aged

Tears are the summer showers to the soul.

Tears are the summer showers to the soul.