“Quiet as a shadowLight as a featherQuick as a snakeCalm as still waterSmooth as summer silkSwift as a deerSlippery as an eelStrong as a bearFierce as a wolverineStill as stone”

“Better to wait quietly in their corner, they think, than to be dashedagainst the stones.”

“You start a question, and it's like starting a stone. You sit quietly on the top of a hill; and away the stone goes, starting others...”

“Hearts with one purpose alone/Through summer and winter seem/Enchanted to a stone/To trouble the living stream.”

“The House Was Quiet and the World Was CalmThe house was quiet and the world was calm. The reader became the book; and summer night Was like the conscious being of the book. The house was quiet and the world was calm. The words were spoken as if there was no book, Except that the reader leaned above the page, Wanted to lean, wanted much to be The scholar to whom his book is true, to whom The summer night is like a perfection of thought. The house was quiet because it had to be. The quiet was part of the meaning, part of the mind: The access of perfection to the page. And the world was calm. The truth in a calm world, In which there is no other meaning, itself Is calm, itself is summer and night, itself Is the reader leaning late and reading there.”

“The summer passed quietly. I busied myself as best I could, reading a good deal.”