Happiness, not in another place but this place…not for another hour, but this hour.
Either define the moment or the moment will define you.
Keep your face always toward the sunshine – and shadows will fall behind you.
This is what you should do: love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men … re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss what insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem.
Every hour of every day is an unspeakably perfect miracle.
The truth is simple. If it was complicated, everyone would understand it.
When one reaches out to help another he touches the face of God.
We were together. I forget the rest.
Be curious, not judgmental.
Re-examine all that you have been told… dismiss that which insults your soul.
As for me, I know nothing else but miracles,
Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,
Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky,
Or wade with naked feet along the beach just in the edge of the water,
Or stand under the trees in the woods,
Or talk by day with any one I love,
Or sleep in bed at night with any one I love,
Or watch honey bees busy around the hive of a summer forenoon…
Or the wonderfulness of the sundown,
Or of stars shining so quiet and bright,
Or the exquisite delicate thin curve of the new moon in spring…
What stranger miracles are there?
Do anything, but let it produce joy.
The earth is rude, silent, incomprehensible at first; Be not discouraged – keep on – there are divine things, well envelop’d; I swear to you there are divine things more beautiful than words can tell.
It is only the novice in political economy who thinks it is the duty of government to make its citizens happy – government has no such office.
Simplicity is the glory of expression.
Not I, nor anyone else can travel that road for you. You must travel it by yourself. It is not far. It is within reach. Perhaps you have been on it since you were born, and did not know. Perhaps it is everywhere – on water and land.
Resist much, obey little.
Those who love each other shall become invincible.
I swear to you, there are divine things more beautiful than words can tell
The gift is to the giver, and comes back most to him – it cannot fail
I exist as I am, that is enough.
Dismiss whatever insults your soul.
The secret of it all, is to write in the gush, the throb, the flood, of the moment – to put things down without deliberation – without worrying about their style – without waiting for a fit time or place. I always worked that way. I took the first scrap of paper, the first doorstep, the first desk, and wrote – wrote, wrote…By writing at the instant the very heartbeat of life is caught.
Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.
Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes.
