So when one stands in a cherished place for the last time before a voyage without return, he sees it all whole, and real, and dear, as he has never seen it before and never will see it again.

There is a certain bleakness in finding hope where one expected certainty.

When I was young, I had to choose between the life of being and the life of doing. And I leapt at the latter like a trout to a fly. But each deed you do, each act, binds you to itself and to its consequences, and makes you act again and yet again. Then very seldom do you come upon a space, a time like this, between act and act, when you may stop and simply be. Or wonder who, after all, you are.

All power is one in source and end, I think. Years and distances, stars and candles, water and wind and wizardry, the craft in a man’s hand and the wisdom in a tree’s root: they all arise together. My name, and yours, and the true name of the sun, or a spring of water, or an unborn child, all are syllable of the great word that is very slowly spoken by the shining of the stars. There is no other power.

We must keep the secrets of our craft.” “Good,” said the boy, for he had no wish to tell the secret to his playmates, liking to know and do what they knew not and could not.

I doubt that the imagination can be suppressed. If you truly eradicated it in a child, he would grow up to be an eggplant.