A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.
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It is in the compelling zest of high adventure and of victory, and in creative action, that man finds his supreme joys.
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Only he can understand what a farm is, what a country is, who shall have sacrificed part of himself to his farm or country, fought to save it, struggled to make it beautiful. Only then will the love of farm or country fill his heart.
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Night, the beloved. Night, when words fade and things come alive. When the destructive analysis of day is done, and all that is truly important becomes whole and sound again. When man reassembles his fragmentary self and grows with the calm of a tree.
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All men have the stars, but they do not mean the same things for different people. For some they are guides, for others, no more than little lights in the sky. But all these are silent. You--you alone have the stars as no one else has them
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Grown ups never understand anything for themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them.
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If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.
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There is a cheap literature that speaks to us of the need of escape. It is true that when we travel we are in search of distance. But distance is not to be found. It melts away. And escape has never led anywhere. The moment a man finds that he must play the races, go the Arctic, or make war in order to feel himself alive, that man has begin to spin the strands that bind him to other men and to the world. But what wretched strands! A civilization that is really strong fills man to the brim, though he never stir. What are we worth when motionless, is the question.
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Grown-ups never understand anything for themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them.
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If someone wants a sheep, then that means that he exists.
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One runs the risk of weeping a little, if one allows himself to be tamed.
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A civilization is a heritage of beliefs, customs, and knowledge slowly accumulated in the course of centuries, elements difficult at times to justify by logic, but justifying themselves as paths when they lead somewhere, since they open up for man his inner distance.
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One man may hit the mark, another blunder; but heed not these distinctions. Only from the alliance of the one, working with and through the other, are great things born.
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He who has gone, so we but cherish his memory, abides with us, more potent, nay, more present than the living man.
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We say nothing essential about the cathedral when we speak of its stones. We say nothing essential about Man when we seek to define him by the qualities of men.
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He who would travel happily must travel light.
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Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward in the same direction.
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Love has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same direction.
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He who is different from me does not impoverish me - he enriches me. Our unity is constituted in something higher than ourselves - in Man... For no man seeks to hear his own echo, or to find his reflection in the glass.
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One man may hit the mark, another blunder but heed not these distinctions. Only from the alliance of the one, working with and through the other, are great things born.
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When you give yourself, you receive more than you give.
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A pile of rocks ceases to be a rock when somebody contemplates it with the idea of a cathedral in mind.
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Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction.
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Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same direction.
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A civilization is built on what is required of men, not on that which is provided for them.
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A goal without a plan is just a wish.
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You are beautiful, but you are empty. One could not die for you. To be sure, an ordinary passerby would think that my rose looked just like you--the rose that belongs to me. But in herself alone she is more important than all the hundreds of you other roses: because it is she that I have watered.
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I know but one freedom, and that is the freedom of the mind.
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A chief is a man who assumes responsibility. He says 'I was beaten,' he does not say 'My men were beaten'.
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It is only with the heart that one can see rightly what is essential is invisible to the eye.
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