We teachers can only help the work going on, as servants wait upon a master.
Only
Write books only if you are going to say in them the things you would never dare confide to anyone.
The only Zen you find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there.
If you pay a child a dollar to read a book, as some schools have tried, you not only create an expectation that reading makes you money, you also run the risk of depriving the child for ever of the value of it. Markets are not innocent.
Sisters are brittle things. God was penurious with me, which makes me shrewd with Him. One is a dainty sum! One bird, one cage, one flight; one song in those far woods, as yet suspected by faith only!
There have been only rare moments in history where individual histories were able to run their course without wars or revolutions.
The past is our definition. We may strive with good reason to escape it, or to escape what is bad in it. But we will escape it only by adding something better to it.
There are men whom a happy disposition, a strong desire of glory and esteem, inspire with the same love for justice and virtue which men in general have for riches and honors… But the number of these men is so small that I only mention them in honor of humanity.
If we all think only of our own interests, we are headed for collective disaster – just look at what we are doing to our planet’s climate.
I took the vow of celibacy in 1906. I had not shared my thoughts with my wife until then, but only consulted her at the time of making the vow. She had no objection.