Imperceptible
It withers in the world,
This flower-like human heart.

Thought can never capture the movement of life, it is much too slow. It is like lightning and thunder. They occur simultaneously, but sound, travelling slower than light, reaches you later, creating the illusion of two separate events.

I have always said there are no glass ceilings. I don’t think men are waiting to not allow women to do what they want. I think women have to want it for themselves. And if they want it for themselves, they will have it

A world of grief and pain
Oh God, but flowers bloom, even then.

Philosophy, if it cannot answer so many questions as we could wish, has at least the power of asking questions which increase the interest of the world, and show the strangeness and wonder lying just below the surface even in the commonest things of daily life.

When war, as in these days in Iraq, threatens the fate of humanity, it is ever more urgent to proclaim, with a strong and decisive voice, that only peace is the road to follow to construct a more just and united society. Violence and arms can never resolve the problems of man.

I don't read poetry for pleasure. I read to be terrified in a way. And people who terrify me from their size and the grandeur of their imagination now are people like Pasternak and Neruda, a lot of Latin-American poets, Lowell - very few English poets - Ted Hughes a little...very few English poets now in fact (1968)

If you let people follow their feelings, they will be able to do good. This is what is meant by saying that human nature is good.

I will not allow my daughter’s blood to be trampled on.

A drop
Melting into the sea,
Everyone can see.
But the sea
Absorped
In a drop —
A rare one
can follow!

My fellow New Yorkers: Today begins a new era.

... the sparrow’s chirp, the crow’s caw, the willow’s green, the cherry blossom’s pink, are the truth of the Zen master and the essence of Basho's style.

Any ambiguity in Islamic teachings, any mistake by an Islamic leader, any misinterpreta­tion of Islamic principles, any reactionary measure or policy by Islamic rulers can be grist for the mill of imperialist conspiracy, can be inspired by CIA provocation, can be blown up and emphasised by Western propaganda.’ (Page 5)

After the death of Origen his followers disturbed the Church very much by maintaining and propagating his errors... Finally, in the twelfth canon of the second council of Constantinople, both Origen and all those who would persist in defending his doctrine were condemned. p. 49

Nature chose for a tool, not the earthquake or lightning to rend and split asunder, not the stormy torrent or eroding rain, but the tender snow-flowers noiselessly falling through unnumbered centuries, the offspring of the sun and sea.

Is it not true that no two human beings understand anything whatsoever about each other, that those who consider themselves bosom friends may be utterly mistaken about their fellow and, failing to realize this sad truth throughout a lifetime, weep when they read in the newspapers about his death?