“He is your field which you sow with love and reap with thanksgiving.”

“Then a ploughman said, speak to us of work: in keeping yourself with labour you are in truth loving life,And to love life through labour is to be intimate with inmost secrets.And what is it to work with love?It is to weave the cloth with threads from your heart, even as if your beloved were to wear that cloth.It is to build a house with affection, even as if your beloved were to dwell in that house.It is to sow seeds with tenderness and reap the harvest with joy, even as if your beloved were to eat the fruit .It is to change all things you fashion with a breath of your own spirit.He who works in marble, and finds the shape of his own soul in the stone, is nobler than he who ploughs the soil.”

“And now you ask in your heart, ‘How shall we distinguish that which is good in pleasure from that which is not good?’Go to your fields and your gardens, and you shall learn that it is the pleasure of the bee to gather honey of the flower,But it is also the pleasure of the flower to yield its honey to the bee.For to the bee a flower is a fountain of life,And to the flower a bee is a messenger of love,And to both, bee and flower, the giving and the receiving of pleasure is a need and an ecstasy.*People of Orphalese, be in your pleasures like the flowers and the bees.”

“Your friend is your needs answered.He is your field which you sow with love and reap with thanksgiving.And he is your board and your fireside.For you come to him with your hunger, and you seek him for peace.”

“Your friend is your needs answered.When you part from your friend, you grieve not;For that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence, as the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain.”

“And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy;And you would accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields.”

“For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning. Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun, so shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.”