In order to go on living one must try to escape the death involved in perfectionism.

Death not merely ends life, it also bestows upon it a silent completeness, snatched from the hazardous flux to which all things human are subject.

Promises are the uniquely human way of ordering the future, making it predictable and reliable to the extent that this is humanly possible.

No punishment has ever possessed enough power of deterrence to prevent the commission of crimes. On the contrary, whatever the punishment, once a specific crime has appeared for the first time, its reappearance is more likely than its initial emergence could ever have been.

Power and violence are opposites; where the one rules absolutely, the other is absent. Violence appears where power is in jeopardy, but left to its own course it ends in power's disappearance.

The trouble with lying and deceiving is that their efficiency depends entirely upon a clear notion of the truth that the liar and deceiver wishes to hide.

To me education is a leading out of what is already there in the pupil's soul. To Miss Mackay it is a putting in of something that is not there, and that is not what I call education. I call it intrusion.

It is impossible to repent of love. The sin of love does not exist.

It is impossible to persuade a man who does not disagree, but smiles.

Show me your hands. Do they have scars from giving? Show me your feet. Are they wounded in service? Show me your heart. Have you left a place for divine love?

Love is a mutual self-giving which ends in self-recovery.

The artist one day falls through a hole in the brambles, and from that moment he is following the dark rapids of an underground river which may sometimes flow so near to the surface that the laughing picnic parties are heard above.

The dread of lonliness is greater than the fear of bondage, so we get married.

Hate is the consequence of fear; we fear something before we hate it; a child who fears noises becomes a man who hates noise.

Classical and romantic: private language of a family quarrel, a dead dispute over the distribution of emphasis between man and nature.

We love but once, for once only are we perfectly equipped for loving.

Purity engenders Wisdom, Passion avarice, and Ignorance folly, infatuation and darkness.

There is no pain equal to that which two lovers can inflict on one another. This should be made clear to all who contemplate such a union. The avoidance of this pain is the beginning of wisdom, for it is strong enough to contaminate the rest of our lives.

It is only in the country that we can get to know a person or a book.

The true index of a man's character is the health of his wife.

Those of us who were brought up as Christians and have lost our faith have retained the sense of sin without the saving belief in redemption. This poisons our thought and so paralyses us in action.

Today the function of the artist is to bring imagination to science and science to imagination, where they meet, in the myth.

The worst vice of the solitary is the worship of his food.

In a full heart there is room for everything, and in an empty heart there is room for nothing.

Flowers are without hope. Because hope is tomorrow and flowers have no tomorrow.

One lives in the hope of becoming a memory.

There is no worse sorrow than remembering happiness in the day of sorrow.

One must not trifle with love.

Each memorable verse of a true poet has two or three times the written content.

Love is much nicer to be in than an automobile accident, a tight girdle, a higher tax bracket or a holding pattern over Philadelphia.

Strength is the capacity to break a chocolate bar into four pieces with your bare hands - and then eat just one of the pieces.

One advantage of marriage is that, when you fall out of love with him or he falls out of love with you, it keeps you together until you fall in again.

Close friends contribute to our personal growth. They also contribute to our personal pleasure, making the music sound sweeter, the wine taste richer, the laughter ring louder because they are there.

I always credited my mother with inspiring me to be a writer because she was such a passionate reader. She read poetry to me as a child. But rather late in life, I've come to appreciate my father, the accountant. He was a solid, organized, get-the-job-done kind of person-and you need that piece of it to be a writer, too.

I had lived with my mother in anger and love - I suppose most daughters do - but my children only knew her in one way: As the lady who thought they were smarter than Albert Einstein. As the lady who thought they wrote better than William Shakespeare. As the lady who thought every picture they drew was a Rembrandt.

Looking back, I have this to regret, that too often when I loved, I did not say so.

Scotsmen are metaphisical and emotional, they are sceptical and mystical, they are romantic and ironic, they are cruel and tender, and full of mirth and despair.

All love is lost but upon God alone.

A lawyer who does not know men is handicapped.

To God be humble, to thy friend be kind, and with thy neighbors gladly lend and borrow; His chance tonight, it maybe thine tomorrow.

Success produces confidence; confidence relaxes industry, and negligence ruins the reputation which accuracy had raised.

They say Princes learn no art truly, but the art of horsemanship. The reason is, the brave beast is no flatterer. He will throw a prince as soon as his groom.

There is no greater hell than to be a prisoner of fear.

True happiness consists not in the multitude of friends, but in the worth and choice.

He knows not his own strength that has not met adversity.

Good men are the stars, the planets of the ages wherein they live, and illustrate the times.

Love ceases to be a pleasure when it ceases to be a secret.

Each moment of a happy lover's hour is worth an age of dull and common life.

Pessimism leads to weakness, optimism to power.

Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.