Would not the child's heart break in despair when the first cold storm of the world sweeps over it, if the warm sunlight of love from the eyes of mother and father did not shine upon him like the soft reflection of divine light and love?

And then when all around grows dark, when we feel utterly alone, when all men right and left pass us by and know us not, a forgotten feeling rises in the breast.

Of these years nought remains in memory but the sad feeling that we have advanced and only grown older.

Soon the child learns that there are strangers, and ceases to be a child.

I spend my happiest hours in reading Vedantic books. They are to me like the light of the morning, like the pure air of the mountains - so simple, so true, if once understood.

The first pages of memory are like the old family Bible. The first leaves are wholly faded and somewhat soiled with handling. But, when we turn further, and come to the chapters where Adam and Eve were banished from Paradise, then, all begins to grow clear and legible.

Is it sin, which makes the worm a chrysalis, and the chrysalis a butterfly, and the butterfly dust?

The spring of love becomes hidden and soon filled up.

While the river of life glides along smoothly, it remains the same river; only the landscape on either bank seems to change.

That is the returning to God which in reality is never concluded on earth but yet leaves behind in the soul a divine home sickness, which never again ceases.

Not far from our house, and opposite the old church with the golden cross, stood a large building, even larger than the church, and having many towers.

Whoever knows it also knows that in love there is no More and no Less; but that he who loves can only love with the whole heart, and with the whole soul; with all his strength and with all his will.

I was shortly again at the castle, and the Princess gave me her hand to kiss and then brought her children, the young princes and princesses, and we played together, as if we had known each other for years.

Every life has its years in which one progresses as on a tedious and dusty street of poplars, without caring to know where he is.

A flower cannot blossom without sunshine, and man cannot live without love.

What is emitted from the divine, though it be only like the reflection from the fire, still has the divine reality in itself, and one might almost ask what were the fire without glow, the sun without light, or the Creator without the creature?

I was so astonished that another had penetrated so deeply into the secrets of my soul, and that he knew what I did not know myself, that when I recovered from it he had already been long upon the street.

Childhood has its secrets and its mysteries; but who can tell or who can explain them!

How mankind defers from day to day the best it can do, and the most beautiful things it can enjoy, without thinking that every day may be the last one, and that lost time is lost eternity!

It smote me to the heart that I had found no one in all the world who loved me more than all others.

Thus one memory follows another until the waves dash together over our heads, and a deep sigh swells the breast, which warns us that we have forgotten to breathe in the midst of these pure thoughts.

I believe I can even yet remember when I saw the stars for the first time.

Would not the child's heart break in despair when the first cold storm of the world sweeps over it, if the warm sunlight of love from the eyes of mother and father did not shine upon him like the soft reflection of divine light and love?

Yes, now I understood for the first time that my soul was not so poor and empty as it had seemed to me, and that it had been only the sun that was lacking to open all its germs, and buds to the light.

Childhood has its secrets and its mysteries but who can tell or who can explain them

Soon the child learns that there are strangers and ceases to be a child.

There is no book in the world that is so thrilling, stirring and inspiring as the Upanishads.

Courage is not the absence of despair; it is, rather, the capacity to move ahead in spite of despair.

If pessimism is despair, optimism is cowardice and stupidity. Is there any need to choose between them?

Just as despair can come to one only from other human beings, hope, too, can be given to one only by other human beings.

Don't despair too much if you see beautiful things destroyed, if you see them perish. Because the best things are always growing in secret.

Every composer knows the anguish and despair occasioned by forgetting ideas which one had no time to write down.

With optimism, you look upon the sunny side of things. People say, 'Studs, you're an optimist.' I never said I was an optimist. I have hope because what's the alternative to hope? Despair? If you have despair, you might as well put your head in the oven.

You may not know it, but at the far end of despair, there is a white clearing where one is almost happy.

Law is born from despair of human nature.

If I were a girl, I'd despair. The supply of good women far exceeds that of the men who deserve them.

This book, conceived in sorrow, composed in grief, and constructed at the brink of despair, contains my mind's best thoughts, and my soul's triumph over the powers of darkness.

Her pupils were at once her salvation and her despair. They gave her the means of supporting life, but they made life hardly worth supporting.

It is not enough to tackle the mechanics of terror organizations. We must also tackle the situations that create terrorists. We desperately need to address the frustration, the loss and the despair that drive some to these actions.

Los Angeles was an impression of failure, of disappointment, of despair, and of oddly makeshift lives. This is California? I thought.

Despair is the conclusion of fools.

Melancholy and sadness are the start of doubt... doubt is the beginning of despair; despair is the cruel beginning of the differing degrees of wickedness.

God gave you not a spirit of faithlessness, not a spirit of despair.

If you don't love it, you can't suffer thru all the despair that comes with it. Keep doing it because you love it.

The denial of our duty to act in this case is a denial of our right to act; and if we have no right to act, then may we well be termed the white slaves of the North, for like our brethren in bonds, we must seal our lips in silence and despair.

We cannot despair of humanity, since we ourselves are human beings.

Despair is typical of those who do not understand the causes of evil, see no way out, and are incapable of struggle. The modern industrial proletariat does not belong to the category of such classes.

Revenge is barren of itself: it is the dreadful food it feeds on; its delight is murder, and its end is despair.

Action is the antidote to despair.