“A person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly. You can have a wonky nose and a crooked mouth and a double chin and stick-out teeth, but if you have good thoughts, they will shine of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.”

“A day is too great a force to bear without the heart open.”

“Mo sheasamh ort lá na choise tinne.”

“You are the place where I stand on the day when my feet are sore. ”

“What madness is austerity in the rose season! When the sky meadow blooms so should we.
And in winter, why can’t the warmth of any summer day still be on our faces, that another can feel.

You have tied heaven’s hands behind her back and veiled her face, otherwise her lips you would know any hour you desired.

Write a little note to yourself about when your heart was most alive.
Carry that with you for a fortnight;

some tiny transference of love could happen to all you near, when your memory touches what was once sacred to you.

Anything good in your past is a harbinger of what is to come in greater quantities.

Some words of Saadi come to mind about this-why should they not when he was such an influence upon me. He helped me grow from child to man; he helped my arms embrace others more deeply. He increased my pen’s abilities every time I bowed and sang at his tomb.

’Whatever beauty you have know, darling, you will know a thousand times more.’

Whatever beauty you have known, you will know a thousand times more.”

“But people are oceans. You cannot know them by their surface.”

“It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.

I was so preposterously serious in those days, such a humorless little prig. Lightly, lightly – it’s the best advice ever given me. When it comes to dying even. Nothing ponderous, or portentous, or emphatic. No rhetoric, no tremolos, no self conscious persona putting on its celebrated imitation of Christ or Little Nell. And of course, no theology, no metaphysics. Just the fact of dying and the fact of the clear light.

So throw away your baggage and go forward. There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet, trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair. That’s why you must walk so lightly. Lightly my darling, on tiptoes and no luggage, not even a sponge bag, completely unencumbered.”