Forgiveness breaks the chain of causality because he who ‘forgives’ you–out of love–takes upon himself the consequences of what you have done. Forgiveness, therefore, always entails a sacrifice.The price you must pay for your own...

It is playing safe that we create a world of utmost insecurity.

Humility before the flower at the timber line is the gate which gives access to the path up the open fell.

I believe that we should die with decency so that at least decency will survive.

The pursuit of peace and progress cannot end in a few years in either victory or defeat. The pursuit of peace and progress, with its trials and its errors, its successes and its setbacks, can...

The only kind of dignity which is genuine is that which is not diminished by the indifference of others.

Only he deserves power who every day justifies it.

Forgiveness is the answer to the child’s dream of a miracle by which what is broken is made whole again, what is soiled is made clean again.

I am the vessel. The draft is God’s. And God is the thirsty one.

Never measure the height of a mountain until you have reached the top. Then you will see how low it was.

It is easy to be nice, even to an enemy – from lack of character.

Do not seek death. Death will find you. But seek the road which makes death a fulfillment.

Time always seems long to the child who is waiting – for Christmas, for next summer, for becoming a grownup: long also when he surrenders his whole soul to each moment of a happy day.

I never discuss discussions.

To have humility is to experience reality, not in relation to ourselves, but in its sacred independence. It is to see, judge, and act from the point of rest in ourselves. Then, how much disappears,...

The more faithfully you listen to the voices within you, the better you will hear what is sounding outside.

Pray that your loneliness may spur you into finding something to live for, great enough to die for.

Praise those of your critics for whom nothing is up to standard.

The light died in the low clouds. Falling snow drank in the dusk. Shrouded in silence, the branches wrapped me in their peace. When the boundaries were erased, once again the wonder: that *I* exist.

Everything will be all right – you know when? When people, just people, stop thinking of the United Nations as a weird Picasso abstraction and see it as a drawing they made themselves.

It is not the repeated mistakes, the long succession of petty betrayals–though, God knows, they would give cause enough for anxiety and self-contempt–but the huge elementary mistake, the betrayal of that within me which is...

This accidentalmeeting of possibilitiescalls itself I.I ask: what am I doing here?And, at once, this Ibecomes unreal.

It is when we all play safe that we create a world of utmost insecurity.

If only I may grow: firmer, simpler, quieter, warmer.

Those who invoke history will certainly be heard by history. And they will have to accept its verdict.

He is one of those who has had the wilderness for a pillow, and called a star his brother. Alone. But loneliness can be a communion.

We are not permitted to choose the frame of our destiny. But what we put into it is ours.

Beneath the hush a whisper from long ago, promising peace of mind and a burden shared.No peace which is not peace for all, no rest until all has been fulfilled.

Humility is just as much the opposite of self-abasement as it is of self-exaltation. To be humble is not to make comparisons. Secure in its reality, the self is neither better nor worse, bigger nor...

If even dying is to be made a social function, then, grant me the favor of sneaking out on tiptoe without disturbing the party.

Never look down to test the ground before taking your next step; only he who keeps his eye fixed on the far horizon will find the right road.

Time goes by, reputation increases, ability declines.

When the sense of the earth unites with the sense of one’s body, one becomes earth of the earth, a plant among plants, an animal born from the soil and fertilizing it. In this union,...

God does not die on the day when we cease to believe in a personal deity, but we die on the day when our lives cease to be illumined by the steady radiance, renewed daily,...

You wake from dreams of doom and–for a moment–you know: beyond all the noise and the gestures, the only real thing, love’s calm unwavering flame in the half-light of an early dawn.

At every moment you choose yourself. But do you choose *your* self? Body and soul contain a thousand possibilities out of which you can build many I’s. But in one of them is there a...

In the last analysis, it is our conception of death which decides our answers to all the questions that life puts to us.

When you have reached the point where you no longer expect a response, you will at last be able to give in such a way that the other is able to receive, and be grateful....

Constant attention by a good nurse may be just as important as a major operation by a surgeon.

The myths have always condemned those who ‘looked back.’ Condemned them, whatever the paradise may have been which they were leaving. Hence this shadow over each departure from your decision.

A heart pulsating in harmony with the circulation of sap and the flow of rivers? A body with the rhythms of the earth in its movements? No. Instead: a mind, shut off from the oxygen...

‘Freedom from fear’ could be said to sum up the whole philosophy of human rights.

It is not we who seek the Way, but the Way which seeks us. That is why you are faithful to it, even while you stand waiting, so long as you are prepared, and act...

Better than other people.’ Sometimes he says: ‘That, at least, you are.’ But more often: ‘Why should you be? Either you are what you can be, or you are not – like other people.

The more we do, the more we can do; the more busy we are, the more leisure we have.

Your cravings as a human animal do not become a prayer just because it is God whom you ask to attend to them.

Your position never gives you the right to command. It only imposes on you the duty of so living your life that others can receive your orders without being humiliated.

The Assembly has witnessed over the last weeks how historical truth is established; once an allegation has been repeated a few times, it is no longer an allegation, it is an established fact, even if...

Trees quiver in the wind,sailing on a sea of mistout of earshot.

Life yields only to the conqueror. Never accept what can be gained by giving in. You will be living off stolen goods, and your muscles will atrophy.