We teach our children one thing only, as we were taught: to wake up. We teach our children to look alive there, to join by words and activities the life of human culture on this...

Were the earth smooth, our brains would be smooth as well; we would wake, blink, walk two steps to get the whole picture, and lapse into a dreamless sleep.

I had a head for religious ideas. They were the first ideas I ever encountered. They made other ideas seem mean….I had miles of Bible in memory: some perforce, but most by hap, like the...

These aren’t still shots; the camera is always moving. And the scene is always just slipping out of sight, as if in spite of myself I were always descending a hill, rounding a corner, stepping...

I think it would be well, and proper, and obedient, and pure, to grasp your one necessity and not let it go, to dangle from it limp wherever it takes you.

The rock I’d seen in my life looked dull because in all ignorance I’d never thought to knock it open. People have cracked ordinary New England pegmatite – big, coarse granite – and laid bare...

The soul may ask God for anything, and never fail.

Insofar as he cultivates and enjoys them in holiness, he frees their souls…he who prays and sings in holiness, eats and speaks in holiness…through him the sparks which have fallen will be uplifted, and the...

I am a fugitive and a vagabond, a sojourner seeking signs.

It is dire poverty indeed when a man is so malnourished and fatigued that he won’t stoop to pick up a penny. But if you cultivate a healthy poverty and simplicity, so that finding a...