One day a child goes to his mother and asks her, “Ma, who is that inane old man sitting on the mountain? ”
Mother answers, “Don’t call him an old man, for he is a wise one, who knows the answer to every question in this universe.”
“Really, he knows answers to all questions?” asks the child.
“Yes my dear” replies the mother.
The child goes to the mountain where the ancient is meditating, catches a butterfly in from the garden, and cupping the butterfly gently in his hands, he approaches him. Keeping his hand behind his back, he asks him, ” Is the thing in my hand alive or dead?” The child thinks that if the ancient answers that the thing is alive, he will crush the butterfly in his hand and show the dead butterfly proving him wrong. And if the ancient answers that the thing is dead, he will open his gently cupped hand, allowing the butterfly to fly away showing that the butterfly was alive and again proving him wrong. Thus,no one can know the answer to all questions.
“Is the thing in my hand alive or dead?” repeats the eager child.
The Ancient opens his eyes, nods his head and replies,

“My dear son, the answer lies in your hands!”

Naomi Shihab Nye

What can a yellow glove mean in a world of motorcars and governments?

I was small, like everyone. Life was a string of precautions: Don’t kiss the squirrel before you bury him, don’t suck candy, pop balloons, drop watermelons, watch TV. When the new gloves appeared one Christmas, tucked in soft tissue, I heard it trailing me: Don’t lose the yellow gloves.
I was small, there was too much to remember. One day, waving at a stream—the ice had cracked, winter chipping down, soon we would sail boats and roll into ditches—I let a glove go. Into the stream, sucked under the street. Since when did streets have mouths? I walked home on a desperate road. Gloves cost money. We didn’t have much. I would tell no one. I would wear the yellow glove that was left and keep the other hand in a pocket. I knew my mother’s eyes had tears they had not cried yet, I didn’t want to be the one to make them flow. It was the prayer I spoke secretly, folding socks, lining up donkeys in windowsills. To be good, a promise made to the roaches who scouted my closet at night. If you don’t get in my bed, I will be good. And they listened. I had a lot to fulfill.

The months rolled down like towels out of a machine. I sang and drew and fattened the cat. Don’t scream, don’t lie, don’t cheat, don’t fight—you could hear it anywhere. A pebble could show you how to be smooth, tell the truth. A field could show how to sleep without walls. A stream could remember how to drift and change—next June I was stirring the stream like a soup, telling my brother dinner would be ready if he’d only hurry up with the bread, when I saw it. The yellow glove draped on a twig. A muddy survivor. A quiet flag.

Where had it been in the three gone months? I could wash it, fold it in my winter drawer with its sister, no one in that world would ever know. There were miracles on Harvey Street. Children walked home in yellow light. Trees were reborn and gloves traveled far, but returned. A thousand miles later, what can a yellow glove mean in a world of bankbooks and stereos?

Part of the difference between floating and going down.

William Shakespeare

Why, all delights are vain, but that most vain which, with pain purchased, doth inherit pain:

As, painfully to pore upon a book, To seek the light of truth,

which truth the while doth falsely blind the eyesight of his look.

Hasan al Basri RA

Death has shown the reality of this worldly life.

It did not leave any happiness for those who are wise.

Patrick White

"I am uncomfortably aware of the very little I have seen and experienced of things in general, and of our country in particular,' Miss Trevelyan had just confessed, 'but the little I have seen is less, I like to feel, than what I know. Knowledge was never a matter of geography. Quite the reverse, it overflows all maps that exist. Perhaps true knowledge only comes of death by torture in the country of the mind."

(Voss)

William Butler Yeats

All the words that I utter,

And all the words that I write,

Must spread out their wings untiring,

And never rest in their flight,
Till they come where your sad, sad heart is,

And sing to you in the night,

Beyond where the waters are moving,

Storm-darken'd or starry bright.

"Allah will provide," said Nasrudin one day to a man who was complaining that someone had stolen some cash from his house.
The man expressed doubt.
Nasrudin took him to the mosque, and rolled on the ground, calling upon Allah to restore the man's twenty silver coins.
Annoyed by his presence, the congregation made a collection and the sum was handed to the surprised loser.
"You may not understand the means which operate in this world," said the Mullah, "but I trust that you understand the end when it is handed to you in such a concrete form."