The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety

it is of little use to us to be able to remember and predict if it makes us unable to live fully in the present.

To be passing is to live; to remain and continue is to die. “

Music is a delight because of its rhythm and flow. Yet the moment you arrest the flow and prolong a note or chord beyond its time, the rhythm is destroyed. Because life is likewise a flowing process, change and death are its necessary parts. To work for their exclusion is to work against life.

so long as the mind believes in the possibility of escape from what it is at this moment, there can be no freedom.

when you are dancing you are not intent on getting somewhere.

there is no “you” apart from what you sense, feel, and know.

I efface myself in order to assert myself, and give myself away in order to keep myself. The whole thing is a contradiction.

But because it is the use and nature of words and thoughts to be fixed, definite, isolated, it is extremely hard to describe the most important characteristic of life—its movement and fluidity.

are but men huddling together and shouting to give themselves courage in the dark.