Good communication is just as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after.
Don't wish me happiness - I don't expect to be happy it's gotten beyond that, somehow. Wish me courage and strength and a sense of humor - I will need them all.
One cannot collect all the beautiful shells on the beach. One can collect only a few, and they are more beautiful if they are few.
To give without any reward, or any notice, has a special quality of its own.
The most exhausting thing in life is being insincere.
It takes as much courage to have tried and failed as it does to have tried and succeeded.
The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach - waiting for a gift from the sea.
One can never pay in gratitude; one can only pay 'in kind' somewhere else in life.
Men kick friendship around like a football, but it doesn't seem to crack. Women treat it like glass and it goes to pieces.
I feel we are all islands - in a common sea.
Only in growth, reform, and change, paradoxically enough, is true security to be found.
For happiness one needs security, but joy can spring like a flower even from the cliffs of despair.
Grief can't be shared. Everyone carries it alone. His own burden in his own way.
If you surrender completely to the moments as they pass, you live more richly those moments.
I do not believe that sheer suffering teaches. If suffering alone taught, all the world would be wise, since everyone suffers. To suffering must be added mourning, understanding, patience, love, openness and the willingness to remain vulnerable.
The only real security is not in owning or possessing, not in demanding or expecting, not in hoping, even. Security in a relationship lies neither in looking back to what it was, nor forward to what it might be, but living in the present and accepting it as it is now.
Arranging a bowl of flowers in the morning can give a sense of quiet in a crowded day - like writing a poem or saying a prayer.
Perhaps this is the most important thing for me to take back from beach-living: simply the memory that each cycle of the tide is valid; each cycle of the wave is valid; each cycle of a relationship is valid.
The loneliness you get by the sea is personal and alive. It doesn't subdue you and make you feel abject. It's stimulating loneliness.
It is only in solitude that I ever find my own core.
