“The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence.”

“The self does not realize itself most fully when self-realization is its most constant aim.”

“Wolf's wool is the best wool, but it cannot be sheared, because the wolf will not comply. With knowledge as with wolves' surliness, the student studies voluntarily, refusing to be less than individual. He "gives his opinion and then rests upon it"; he renders service when there is no reward, and is too reclusive for some things to seem to touch him; not because he has no feeling but because he has so much.”

“Nevertheless"you've seen a strawberrythat's had a struggle; yetwas, where the fragments met,a hedgehog or a star-fish for the multitudeof seeds. What better foodthan apple seeds - the fruitwithin the fruit - locked inlike counter-curved twinhazelnuts? Frost that killsthe little rubber-plant -leaves of kok-sagyyz-stalks, can'tharm the roots; they still growin frozen ground. Once wherethere was a prickley-pear -leaf clinging to a barbed wire,a root shot down to growin earth two feet below;as carrots from mandrakesor a ram's-horn root some-times. Victory won't cometo me unless I goto it; a grape tendrilties a knot in knots tillknotted thirty times - sothe bound twig that's under-gone and over-gone, can't stir.The weak overcomes itsmenace, the strong over-comes itself. What is therelike fortitude! What sapwent through that little threadto make the cherry red!”

“You do not seem to realize that beauty is a liability ratherthanan asset - that in view of the fact that spirit creates formwe are justified in supposingthat you must have brains. For you, a symbol of theunit, stiff and sharp,conscious of surpassing by dint of native superiority andliking for everythingself-dependent, anything anambitious civilization might produce: for you, unaided, toattempt through sheerreserve, to confuse presumptions resulting fromobservation, is idle. You cannot make usthink you a delightful happen-so. But rose, if you arebrilliant, itis not because your petals are the without-which-nothingof pre-eminence. Would you not, minusthorns, be a what-is-this, a mereperculiarity? They are not proof against a worm, theelements, or mildew;but what about the predatory hand? What is brilliancewithout co-ordination? Guarding theinfinitesimal pieces of your mind, compelling audience tothe remark that it is better to be forgotten than to be re-membered too violently,your thorns are the best part of you.”

“Your thorns are the best part of you.”

“The hands are the heart's messengers.”