I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this abyss, and, in their struggles to be truly free, in their triumphs and defeats, through long years to come, I see the evil of this time and of the previous time of which this is the natural birth, gradually making expiation for itself and wearing out.
In Africa a thing is true at first light and a lie by noon and you have no more respect for it than for the lovely, perfect wood-fringed lake you see across the sun-baked salt plain. You have walked across that plain in the morning and you know that no such lake is there. But now it is there absolutely true, beautiful and believable.
Peace is in the grave. The grave hides all things beautiful and good. I am a God and cannot find it there, Nor would I seek it; for, though dread revenge, This is defeat, fierce king, not victory.
First become alone. First start enjoying yourself. First love yourself. First become so authentically happy that if nobody comes it doesn't matter; you are full, overflowing. If nobody knocks at your door it is perfectly okay; you are not missing. You are not waiting for someone to come and knock at the door. You are at home. If somebody comes: good-beautiful. If nobody comes that too is beautiful and good.
We cannot describe the natural history of the soul, but we know that it is divine. All things are known to the soul. It is not to be surprised by any communication. Nothing can be greater than it, let those fear and those fawn who will. The soul is in her native realm; and it is wider than space, older than time, wide as hope, rich as love. Pusillanimity and fear she refuses with a beautiful scorn; they are not for her who putteth on her coronation robes, and goes out through universal love to universal power.
In their struggle for the ethical good, teachers of religion must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal god, that is, give up that source of fear and hope which in the past placed such vast power in the hands of priests. In their labors they will have to avail themselves of those forces which are capable of cultivating the Good, the True, and the Beautiful in humanity itself. This is, to be sure, a more difficult but an incomparably more worthy task.
You are killing me, fish, the old man thought. But you have a right to. Never have I seen a greater, or more beautiful, or a calmer or more noble thing than you, brother.
Yet, she said to herself, form the dawn of time odes have been sung to love; wreaths heaped and roses; and if you asked nine people out of ten they would say they wanted nothing but this--love; while the women, judging from her own experience, would all the time be feeling, This is not what we want; there is nothing more tedious, puerile, and inhumane than this; yet it is also beautiful and necessary.
There are few earthly things more beautiful than a university a place where those who hate ignorance may strive to know, where those who perceive truth may strive to make others see.
He is some brainless, beautiful creature, who should always be here in winter when we have no flowers to look at, and always here in the summer when we want something to chill our intelligence.
The dreams of childhood - it's airy fables, its graceful, beautiful, humane, impossible adornments of the world beyond; so good to be believed in once, so good to be remembered when outgrown.