It is possible to fail in many ways . . . while to succeed is possible only in one way (for which reason also one is easy and the other difficult - to miss the mark easy, to hit it difficult).
We can come to look upon the deaths of our enemies with as much regret as we feel for those of our friends, namely, when we miss their existence as witnesses to our success.
If you filter my words through any tradition or '-ism', you will miss altogether what I am saying. The liberating truth is not static; it is alive. It cannot be put into concepts and be understood by the mind. The truth lies beyond all forms of conceptual fundamentalism. What you are is the beyond—awake and present, here and now already. I am simply helping you to realize that.
You have filled my tea with lumps of sugar, and though I asked most distinctly for bread and butter, you have given me cake. I am known for the gentleness of my disposition, and the extraordinary sweetness of my nature, but I warn you, Miss Cardew, you may go too far.
Among the writers of all ages, some deserve fame, and have it; others neither have nor deserve it; some have it, not deserving it; others, though deserving it, yet totally miss it, or have it not equal to their deserts.
I think that today, faith drives so much of our politics, that I thought, "If you don't talk about it, you are missing a whole big part of what is going on politically."
Is there not something wanted, Miss Price, in our language - a something between compliments and - and love - to suit the sort of friendly acquaintance we have had together?
Paradoxical as it may seem, the purposeful life has no content, no point. It hurries on and on, and misses everything. Not hurrying, the purposeless life misses nothing, for it is only when there is no goal and no rush that the human senses are fully open to receive the world.
I'll tell you what I miss most. What I would love to do, more than anything, is just anthologies. With an anthology you can tell any story and be in every division of television. We don't have any anthologies anymore, do we?