Quotes on May

There is no good trying to be more spiritual than God. God never meant man to purely spiritual creature. That is why He uses material things like bread and wine to put the new life into us. We may think this rather crude and unspiritual. God does not: He invented eating. He likes matter. He invented it.

What an immense mass of evil must result...from allowing men to assume the right of anticipating what may happen.

How strange to think that great pain may be impermanent. Something in us all seems to want to carve it in granite, as if only this would do full honor to its terrible significance. But even pain is blessed with impermanence... p 259

We don't forget.... Our heads may be small, but they are as full of memories as the sky may sometimes be full of swarming bees, thousands and thousands of memories, of smells, of places, of little things that happened to us and which came back, unexpectedly, to remind us who we are.

I am determined to be cheerful and happy in whatever situation I may find myself. For I have learned that the greater part of our misery or unhappiness is determined not by our circumstance but by our disposition.

I think the reason these readers come back to me is because I represent their points of view. It may not be my point of view, but that's OK. Everyone still deserves to have their say.

Perhaps the best function of parenthood is to teach the young creature to love with safety, so that it may be able to venture unafraid when later emotion comes; the thwarting of the instinct to love is the root of all sorrow and not sex only but divinity itself is insulted when it is repressed. To disapprove, to condemn the human soul shrivels under barren righteousness.

Since everything is but an apparition, having nothing to do with good or bad, acceptance or rejection, one may well burst out in laughter.

I believe we are going to have to prepare ourselves for the difficult and patient task of outgrowing rigid and intransigent nationalism, and work slowly towards a world federation of peaceful nations. How will this be possible? Don't ask me. I don't know. But unless we develop a moral, spiritual, and political wisdom that is proportionate to our technological skill, our skill may end us.

Although a man may have no jurisdiction over the fact of his existence, he can hold supreme command over the meaning of existence for him.

In these days, it is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education.

Merely gathering knowledge may become the most useless work a man can do. What can you do to help and heal the world? That is the educational test.

Customers often value a good more when its price goes up. One reason may be its signaling value. An expensive handcrafted mechanical watch may tell time no more accurately than a cheap quartz model; but, because few people can afford one, buying it signals that the owner is rich.

I wanted people not to care about whether you were gay, straight, black, white, transgender, whatever it may be... That being said, there's more work to be done... I still want to change the world, absolutely.

My soul, be satisfied with flowers, with fruit, with weeds even; but gather them in the one garden you may call your own.

Shalt show us how divine a thing A woman may be made.

Suppose . . . burglars had made entry into this . . . [library]. Picture them seated here on this floor, pouring the light of their dark-lanterns over some books they found, and thus absorbing moral truths and getting moral uplift. The whole course of their lives would have been changed. As it was, they kept straight on in their immoral way and were sent to jail. For all I know, they may next be sent to Congress.

The world is a divine dream, from which we may presently awake to the glories and certainties of day.

I realize that some of you may have come in hopes of hearing tips on how to become a professional writer. I say to you, "If you really want to hurt your parents, and you don't have the nerve to be a homosexual, the least you can do is go into the arts. But do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites, standing for absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college.

Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but that's the only way you can do anything really good.

You may control a mad elephant; You may shut the mouth of the bear and the tiger; Ride the lion and play with the cobra; By alchemy you may learn your livelihood; You may wander through the universe incognito; Make vassals of the gods; be ever youthful; You may walk in water and live in fire; But control of the mind is better and more difficult.