Quotations

Stretch a bow to the very full,
And you will wish you had stopped in time;
Temper a sword-edge to its very sharpest,
And you will find it soon grows dull.
When bronze and jade fill your hall.

You take a tip from the stable, Cokey: if you must hate, hate the government or the people or the sea or men, but don’t hate an individual person. Who’s done you a real injury.

I mend a puncture on my bike. I get pleasure out of being able to do simple, practical jobs – replacing a fuse, changing a wheel, jump-starting the car – because they are not accomplishments generally associated with a temperament like mine.

You ask me why I live in the grey hills.
I smile but do not answer, for my thoughts are elsewhere.
Like peach petals carried by the stream, they have gone
To other climates, to countries other than the world of men.

There is no more love.  There is no more glory.  A thick night covers the earth.  And we shall be dead before the dawn.

... no, she thought, one could say nothing to nobody. The urgency of the moment always missed its mark. Words fluttered sideways and struck the object inches too low.

A man might die, though nothing else ailed him, only upon an extreme weariness of doing the same thing, over and over.

Above all, do not lose your desire to walk: every day I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness; I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it …

This life is a hospital in which each patient is possessed by a desire to change beds. One would prefer to suffer by the stove. Another believes he would recover if he sat by the window.