Wee Willie Winkie rins through the toun,
Upstairs and dounstairs, in his nicht-goun,
Tirlin' at the window, cryin' at the lock,
"Are the weans in their bed? for it's nou ten o'clock."
I saw the lightning's gleaming rod
Reach forth and write upon the sky
The awful autograph of God.
The very clouds have wept and died
And only God is in the sky.
Confusion is a word we have invented for an order which is not understood.
Contempt is the weapon of the weak and a defense against one's own despised and unwanted feelings.
Teaching a child not to step on a caterpillar is as valuable to the child as it is to the caterpillar.
Contempt is the weapon of the weak and a defense against one's own despised and unwanted feelings.
The one thing we can never get enough of is love. And the one thing we never give enough is love.
The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.
Until it is kindled by a spirit as flamingly alive as the one which gave it birth a book is dead to us. Words divested of their magic are but dead hieroglyphs.
In this age, which believes that there is a short cut to everything, the greatest lesson to be learned is that the most difficult way is, in the long run, the easiest. - The Books in My Life.
Don't take life seriously because you can't come out of it alive.
Every genuine boy is a rebel and an anarch. If he were allowed to develop according to his own instincts, his own inclinations, society would undergo such a radical transformation as to make the adult revolutionary cower and cringe.
To be absolutely certain about something, one must know everything or nothing about it.
The man who looks for security, even in the mind, is like a man who would chop off his limbs in order to have artificial ones which will give him no pain or trouble.
A Christian marriage is [not] one with no problems or even a marriage with fewer problems. (It may well mean more problems.) But it does mean a life in which two people are able to accept each other and love each other in the midst of problems and fears. It means a marriage in which selfish people can accept selfish people without constantly trying to change themâand even accept themselves, because they realize personally that they have been accepted by Christ.
The great work must inevitably be obscure, except to the very few, to those who like the author himself are initiated into the mysteries. Communication then is secondary: it is perpetuation which is important. For this only one good reader is necessary.
I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive.
If men cease to believe that they will one day become gods then they will surely become worms.
When one is trying to do something beyond his known powers it is useless to seek the approval of friends. Friends are at their best in moments of defeat.
The imaginary friends I had as a kid dropped me because their friends thought I didn't exist.
If it's very painful for you to criticize your friends - you're safe in doing it. But if you take the slightest pleasure in it, that's the time to hold your tongue.
Maybe all one can do is hope to end up with the right regrets.
Exaggerated self-importance is deemed an individual fault, but a racial virtue.
The world is not to be put in order; the world is order, incarnate. It is for us to harmonize with this order.