It’s hard for me to grasp the concept of somebody being nervous when I’m talking to them.

I talk to myself all the time. Just make sure you answer.

Diplomacy is listening to what the other guy needs. Preserving your own position, but listening to the other guy. You have to develop relationships with other people so when the tough times come, you can work together.

I want you to be concerned about your next door neighbor. Do you know your next door neighbor?

Speaking English is like tongue-twist for me. I can speak each word perfect, but then you have to string them together like, ‚Blah, blah, blah.‘ That’s when I get crazy.

Culture makes people understand each other better. And if they understand each other better in their soul, it is easier to overcome the economic and political barriers. But first they have to understand that their neighbour is, in the end, just like them, with the same problems, the same questions.

When so many are lonely as seem to be lonely, it would be inexcusably selfish to be lonely alone.

When we’re looking for compassion, we need someone who is deeply rooted, is able to bend and, most of all, embraces us for our strengths and struggles.

Saying nothing… sometimes says the most.

The second time around, I’ll understand that, as a husband, my wife doesn’t care about my opinions. I just need to tell her the things that will continue to help me stack the brownie points.

For an author to write as he speaks is just as reprehensible as the opposite fault, to speak as he writes; for this gives a pedantic effect to what he says, and at the same time makes him hardly intelligible.

Love grows by giving. The love we give away is the only love we keep. The only way to retain love is to give it away.

I don’t go down the road of condemning.

The answer I found is you stay away from the people who make fun of you, and you join these ad hoc groups who understand your craziness.

War is what happens when language fails.

Think twice before you speak, because your words and influence will plant the seed of either success or failure in the mind of another.

I don’t do Shakespeare. I don’t talk in that kind of broken English.

There should be an honest attempt at the reconciliation of differences before resorting to combat.

Write in such a way as that you can be readily understood by both the young and the old, by men as well as women, even by children.

What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others.

We think when God speaks to us, there’s going to be a boom out of Heaven or we’re going to get some chill bumps, but I really believe God’s talking to us all the time. He’s talking to us right in here. I call it our heart, our conscience, but it’s the Holy Spirit talking to us.

You can see neurosis from below – as a sickness – as most psychiatrists see it. Or you can understand it as a compassionate man might: respecting the neurosis as a fumbling and inefficient effort toward good ends.

Life cannot be without relationship, but we have made it so agonizing and hideous by basing it on personal and possessive love. Can one love and yet not possess? You will find the true answer not in escape, ideals, beliefs but through the understanding of the causes of dependence and possessiveness.

For, if a good speaker, never so eloquent, does not see into the fact, and is not speaking the truth of that – is there a more horrid kind of object in creation?

A friend is one who knows you and loves you just the same.

If your man is a sports enthusiast, you may have to resign yourself to his spouting off in a monotone on a prize fight, football game or pennant race.

We have observed that, in society and the world in which we live, selfishness has increased more than love for others, and that men of good will must work, each with his own strengths and expertise, to ensure that love for others increases until it is equal and possibly exceeds love for oneself.

When marrying, ask yourself this question: Do you believe that you will be able to converse well with this person into your old age? Everything else in marriage is transitory.

If you’re talking to a man who wouldn’t fight with you under any circumstances whatsoever, then you’re talking to someone for whom you have absolutely no respect.

The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbours, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.

Meditation is to get insight, to get understanding and compassion, and when you have them, you are compelled to act.

One man cannot hold another man down in the ditch without remaining down in the ditch with him.

I don’t know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.

The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.

In oratory the will must predominate.

No one would talk much in society if they knew how often they misunderstood others.

Every day we should hear at least one little song, read one good poem, see one exquisite picture, and, if possible, speak a few sensible words.

In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood.

Don’t ever take a fence down until you know why it was put up.

To be clear: we have fights and problems like any other couple.

Dialogue means debates and everyone’s point of view.

When I was two, a dragonfly flew near me. A man knocked it to the ground and trod on it. I remember crying because I’d caused the dragonfly to be killed.

We have a tendency to condemn people who are different from us, to define their sins as paramount and our own sinfulness as being insignificant.

You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.

We have language and they do not. Chimps communicate by embracing, patting, looking – all these things. And they have lots of sounds. But they cannot sit and discuss. They cannot teach about things that are not present, as far as we know.

Never elated when someone’s oppressed, never dejected when another one’s blessed.

Friendship is but another name for an alliance with the follies and the misfortunes of others. Our own share of miseries is sufficient: why enter then as volunteers into those of another?

What you guys want, I’m for.

It used to be the case, like you’d switch jobs, and then maybe you wouldn’t keep in touch with all the people that you knew from that old job, just because it was too hard. But one of the things that Facebook does is it makes it really easy to just stay in touch with all these people.

When you are trying to impress people with words, the more you say, the more common you appear, and the less in control. Even if you are saying something banal, it will seem original if you make it vague, open-ended, and sphinxlike.

Facts do not speak for themselves. They speak for or against competing theories. Facts divorced from theories or visions are mere isolated curiosities.

Honest disagreement is often a good sign of progress.

Many a doctrine is like a window pane. We see truth through it but it divides us from truth.

Just as the humble, unassuming, assenting ‚O.K.‘ has deposed the more affirmative ‚Yes,‘ so the little cringe and hesitation and approximation of ‚like‘ are a help to young people who are struggling to negotiate the shoals and rapids of ethnic identity, the street, and general correctness.

I am a writer of books in retrospect. I talk in order to understand; I teach in order to learn.

I wish every American had an opportunity to sit down, to go to a base, to meet with families, to meet with service members, to sit down with our veterans – because we would think differently about our challenges as individuals.

I don’t want to just preach to the church. I feel like I have a broader message.

I can unload my opinion on anybody at anytime.

I don’t hate women – they just sometimes make me mad.

The very elements of what constitutes good nursing are as little understood for the well as for the sick. The same laws of health or of nursing, for they are in reality the same, obtain among the well as among the sick.

You carry Mother Earth within you. She is not outside of you. Mother Earth is not just your environment. In that insight of inter-being, it is possible to have real communication with the Earth, which is the highest form of prayer.