Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for lost faith in ourselves.
The individual who has to justify his existence by his own efforts is in eternal bondage to himself.
The pleasure we derive from doing favors is partly in the feeling it gives us that we are not altogether worthless. It is a pleasant surprise to ourselves.
Many of the insights of the saint stem from their experience as sinners.
It would be difficult to exaggerate the degree to which we are influenced by those we influence.
Self-esteem and self-contempt have specific odors; they can be smelled.
Craving, not having, is the mother of a reckless giving of oneself.
I hang onto my prejudices, they are the testicles of my mind.
We are least open to precise knowledge concerning the things we are most vehement about.
Though dissenters seem to question everything in sight, they are actually bundles of dusty answers and never conceived a new question. What offends us most in the literature of dissent is the lack of hesitation and wonder.
It is probably true that business corrupts everything it touches. It corrupts politics, sports, literature, art, labor unions and so on. But business also corrupts and undermines monolithic totalitarianism. Capitalism is at its liberating best in a noncapitalist environment.
One is not quite certain that creativeness in the arts, literature, and science functions best in an environment of absolute freedom. Chances are that a relatively mild tyranny stimulates creativeness.
There is in most passions a shrinking away from ourselves. The passionate pursuer has all the earmarks of a fugitive.
Compassion alone stands apart from the continuous traffic between good and evil proceeding within us.
It is the child in man that is the source of his uniqueness and creativeness, and the playground is the optimal milieu for the unfolding of his capacities and talents.
There is sublime thieving in all giving. Someone gives us all he has and we are his.