“If we thought of life as a gift, we might not demand nearly as much from it. And if we lived more graciously, giving of ourselves more freely to the well-being of others, many of our personal concerns would disappear, and life would become easier for all.”

“Learn to like what doesn't cost much.Learn to like reading, conversation, music.Learn to like plain food, plain service, plain cooking.Learn to like fields, trees, brooks, hiking, rowing, climbing hills.Learn to like people, even though some of them may be different...different from you.Learn to like to work and enjoy the satisfaction doing your job as well as it can be done.Learn to like the song of birds, the companionship of dogs.Learn to like gardening, puttering around the house, and fixing things.Learn to like the sunrise and sunset, the beating of rain on the roof and windows, and the gentle fall of snow on a winter day.Learn to keep your wants simple and refuse to be controlled by the likes and dislikes of others.”

“How can I help?”

“I do think free will is sewn into everything we do; you can't cross a street, light a cigarette, drop saccharine in your coffee without really doing it. Yet the possible alternatives that life allows us are very few, often there must be none. I've never thought there was any choice for me about writing poetry. No doubt if I used my head better, ordered my life better, worked harder etc., the poetry would be improved, and there must be many lost poems, innumerable accidents and ill-done actions. But asking you is the might have been for me, the one towering change, the other life that might have been had.”

“History has to live with what was here,clutching and close to fumbling all we had -it is so dull and gruesome how we die,unlike writing, life never finishes.”

“The more we serve our fellowmen in appropriate ways, the more substance there is to our souls. We become more significant individuals as we serve others. We become more substantive as we serve others—indeed, it is easier to “find” ourselves because there is so much more of us to find!”

“Life is a stream On which we strew Petal by petal the flower of our heart; The end lost in dream, They float past our view, We only watch their glad, early start. Freighted with hope, Crimsoned with joy, We scatter the leaves of our opening rose; Their widening scope, Their distant employ, We never shall know. And the stream as it flows Sweeps them away, Each one is gone Ever beyond into infinite ways. We alone stay While years hurry on, The flower fared forth, though its fragrance still stays.”