If a serious statement is defined as one that may be made in terms of waking life, poetry will never rise to the level of seriousness. It lies beyond seriousness, on that more primitive and original level where the child, the animal, the savage, and the seer belong, in the region of dream, enchantment, ecstasy, laughter. To understand poetry we must be capable of donning the child's soul like a magic cloak and of forsaking man's wisdom for the child's.

Tennis taught me so many lessons in life. One of the things it taught me is that every ball that comes to me, I have to make a decision. I have to accept responsibility for the consequences every time I hit a ball.

Unfortunately, modern man has become so focused on harnessing nature's resources that he has forgotten how to learn from them. If you let them, however, the elements of nature will teach you as they have taught me.

I thought about the difference between a mama's girl and a daddy's girl. I decided that a daughter who belongs to her daddy expects gifts, while a daughter who belongs to her mama expects a lot more. Not from her mama. From herself.

Tell the truth. Sing with passion. Work with laughter. Love with heart. 'Cause that's all that matters in the end.

Life after love was possible. I was proof. Loss taught you about yourself, burrowed in the dark parts of your soul and ate you from the inside out.

Balt Van Tassel was an easy indulgent soul; he loved his daughter better even than his pipe, and, like a reasonable man and an excellent father, let her have her way in everything.

Sure, it was your idea and your fly, but he caught the big fish. Remember, fairness is a human idea largely unknown in nature.

Wisdom is the daughter of experience

She wondered when her daughter would realise that for the most part, people weren't that different. Young and old, male or female, pretty much everyone she knew wanted the same things: The wanted to feel peace in their hearts, they wanted a life without turmoil, they wanted to be happy. The difference, she thought, was that most young people seemed to think that those things lay somewhere in the future. While most older people believed that they lay in the past.

The barrier during self-improvement is not so much that we hate learning, rather we hate being taught. To learn entails that the knowledge was achieved on one's own accord - it feels great - but to be taught often leaves a feeling of inferiority. Thus it takes a bit of determination and a lot of humility in order for one to fully develop.

She thought about her life and how lost she'd felt for most of it. She thought about the way that all truths she'd been taught to consider valuable invariably conflicted with the world as it was actually lived. How could a person be so utterly lost, yet remain living?

My father taught me that you can you read a hundred books on wisdom and write a hundred books on wisdom, but unless you apply what you learned then its only words on a page. Life is not lived with intentions, but action.

Telling one lie almost always requires another, and before the storyteller knows it, they will be caught inside of their own web.

There is not a single untruth, no -but after ten lines Truth shrieks, she runs distraught and disheveled through her temple's corridors; she does not know herself. 'I can endure lies,' she cries. 'I cannot survive this stifling verisimilitude

She's my daughter. She's my sister.

There is truth, my boy. But the doctrine you desire, absolute, perfect dogma that alone provides wisdom, does not exist. Nor should you long for a perfect doctrine, my friend. Rather, you should long for the perfection of yourself. The deity is within you, not in ideas and books. Truth is lived, not taught.

The Buddha taught complete honesty, with the extra instruction that everything a person says should be truthful and helpful.

Similarly with regard to truth, won't we say that a soul is maimed if it hates a voluntary falsehood, cannot endure to have one in itself, and is greatly angered when it exists in others, but is nonetheless content to accept an involuntary falsehood, isn't angry when it is caught being ignorant, and bears its lack of learning easily, wallowing in it like a pig?

A day without laughter is like living in darkness; you try to find your way around, but you can't see clearly.

In order that all men may be taught to speak truth, it is necessary that all likewise should learn to hear it.

"If losing Sam had taught me anything, it was to seize life-seize everything it had to offer, including the tears, the anger and loss, but most of all, the laughter and the love.

What if everything you have been taught is all a lie and everything you feel is all a truth?

I believe you!' the artiste exclaimed finally and extinguishes his gaze. 'I do! These eyes are not lying! How many times have I told you that your basic error consists in underestimating the significance of the human eye. Understand that the tongue can conceal the truth, but the eyes - never! A sudden question is put to you, you don't even flinch, in one second you get hold of yourself and know what you must say to conceal the truth, and you speak quite convincingly, and not a wrinkle on your face moves, but - alas - the truth which the question stirs up from the bottom of your soul leaps momentarily into your eyes, and it's all over! They see it, and you're caught!