Sand And Foam

Once I saw the face of a woman, and I beheld all her children not yet born.
And a woman looked upon my face and she knew all my forefathers, dead before she was born.

A root is a flower that disdains fame.

The song that lies silent in the heart of a mother sings upon the lips of her child.

Wit is often a mask. If you could tear it you would find either a genius irritated or cleverness juggling.

Our God in His gracious thirst will drink us all, the dewdrop and the tear.

He who would share your pleasure but not your pain shall lose the key to one of the seven gates of Paradise.

If you reveal your secrets to the wind you should not blame the wind for revealing them to the trees.

After all this is not a bad prison; but I do not like this wall between my cell and the next prisoner’s cell;
Yet I assure you that I do not wish to reproach the warder not the Builder of the prison.

When two women talk they say nothing; when one woman speaks she reveals all of life.

It is the mind in us that yields to the laws made by us, but never the spirit in us.

Your other self is always sorry for you. But your other self grows on sorrow; so all is well.

You cannot have youth and the knowledge of it at the same time;
For youth is too busy living to know, and knowledge is too busy seeking itself to live.

Perhaps the sea’s definition of a shell is the pearl.
Perhaps time’s definition of coal is the diamond.

Perhaps the sea’s definition of a shell is the pearl.
Perhaps time’s definition of coal is the diamond.

Do not the spirits who dwell in the ether envy man his pain?

Yestereve I saw philosophers in the market-place carrying their heads in baskets, and crying aloud, “Wisdom! Wisdom for sale!”
Poor philosophers! They must needs sell their heads to feed their hearts.

There lies a green field between the scholar and the poet; should the scholar cross it he becomes a wise man; should the poet cross it, he becomes a prophet.

I am forever walking upon these shores, Betwixt the sand and the foam.
The high tide will erase my foot-prints, And the wind will blow away the foam. But the sea and the shore will remain Forever.

I too am visited by angels and devils, but I get rid of them.
When it is an angel I pray an old prayer, and he is bored;
When it is a devil I commit an old sin, and he passes me by.

May God feed the over-abundant!

The deep and the high go to the depth or to the height in a straight line; only the spacious can move in circles.

Friendship is always a sweet responsibility, never an opportunity.

Now would I fulfill myself. But how shall I unless I become a planet with intelligent lives dwelling upon it?
Is not this every man’s goal?

I stopped my guest on the threshold and said, “Nay, wipe not your feet as you enter, but as you go out.”

Once I knew a man whose ears were exceedingly keen, but he was dumb. He had lost his tongue in a battle.
I know now what battles that man fought before the great silence came. I am glad he is dead.
The world is not large enough for two of us

Said a hunted fox followed by twenty horsemen and a pack of twenty hounds, “Of course they will kill me. But how poor and how stupid they must be. Surely it would not be worth while for twenty foxes riding on twenty asses and accompanied by twenty wolves to chase and kill one man.”

A madman is not less a musician than you or myself; only the instrument on which he plays is a little out of tune.

How blind is he who gives you out of his pocket that he may take out of your heart.

There must be something strangely sacred in salt. It is in our tears and in the sea.

The silence of the envious is too noisy.