Violence, even well intentioned, always rebounds upon oneself.

If I am no longer disturbed myself, I will deal less with disturbed people, but I don’t regret having concerned myself with them because I think most of us are disturbed.

Vanity can create a very cruel space for you if you don’t know how to manage it.

I don’t think that much about my relationship with my mother and what it did to me. I sometimes feel terrible regret about her, what her life must have been like. Often, when I’m enjoying something, I think of how meager her rewards were and how much courage, in a way, she needed to go on living.

The primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that state which most men, necessarily, must avoid; the state of being alone.

I never come back home with the same moral character I went out with; something or other becomes unsettled where I had achieved internal peace; some one or other of the things I had put to flight reappears on the scene.

Everyone has noticed how hard it is to turn our thoughts to God when everything is going well with us… While what we call ‚our own life‘ remains agreeable, we will not surrender it to Him. What, then, can God do in our interests but make ‚our own life‘ less agreeable to us, and take away the plausible sources of false happiness?

We cannot despair of humanity, since we ourselves are human beings.

If you aren’t in the moment, you are either looking forward to uncertainty, or back to pain and regret.

No memory of having starred atones for later disregard, or keeps the end from being hard.

I write for myself things that I’ve gone through.

To be ashamed of one’s immorality: that is a step on the staircase at whose end one is also ashamed of one’s morality.

Americans are far more remarkable than we give ourselves credit for. We’ve been so busy damning ourselves for years. We’ve done it all, and yet we don’t take credit for it.

Self-talk, for me, has been the biggest thing in my life. A lot of us have a dialogue that is crap. It’s a crappy dialogue. We live in a world right now that is very external. Everything is very on the surface. Superficial. Everything. And what we’re telling ourselves is what we see on TV.

No man really knows about other human beings. The best he can do is to suppose that they are like himself.

We identify in our experience a differentiation between what we do and what happens to us.

People pay for what they do, and still more for what they have allowed themselves to become. And they pay for it very simply; by the lives they lead.

I’ve been drunk for about a week now, and I thought it might sober me up to sit in a library.

What could I say to you that would be of value, except that perhaps you seek too much, that as a result of your seeking you cannot find.

I suppose that’s one of the ironies of life doing the wrong thing at the right moment.

In Kosovo, the U.S. has chosen a course of action that escalates atrocities and violence. It is also a course of action that strikes a blow against the regime of international order, but which offers the weak at least some protection from predatory states.

Behavior is the mirror in which everyone shows their image.

He who acts with a constant view to his own advantage will be much murmured against.

When a man asks himself what is meant by action he proves that he isn’t a man of action. Action is a lack of balance. In order to act you must be somewhat insane. A reasonably sensible man is satisfied with thinking.

The greatness of man is great in that he knows himself to be wretched. A tree does not know itself to be wretched.

From my childhood I had been intended for the clergy. This prospect hung like a dark cloud on my mind.

When you learn about the teaching and the practice of another tradition, you always have a chance to understand your own teaching and practice.

If I read a book that impresses me, I have to take myself firmly by the hand, before I mix with other people; otherwise they would think my mind rather queer.

There are as many worlds as there are kinds of days, and as an opal changes its colors and its fire to match the nature of a day, so do I.

I guess I have always been deeply terrified to really be someone’s wife since I know from life one cannot love another, ever, really.

I disagree with everything I used to say.

I’m still living at least five parallel lives, honestly! I wonder about it. I have no idea how that happens.

In a universe that’s an intelligent system with a divine creative force supporting it, there simply can be no accidents. As tough as it is to acknowledge, you had to go through what you went through in order to get to where you are today, and the evidence is that you did.

I soothe my conscience now with the thought that it is better for hard words to be on paper than that Mummy should carry them in her heart.

We have a choice about how we take what happens to us in our life and whether or not we allow it to turn us. We can become consumed by hate and darkness, or we’re able to regain our humanity somehow, or come to terms with things and learn something about ourselves.

The unexamined life is not worth living.

Colombia has been the leading western recipient of U.S. arms and training as violence has grown through the ’90s.

Every man must do two things alone; he must do his own believing and his own dying.

I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them.

Don’t ever forget two things I’m going to tell you. One, don’t believe everything that’s written about you. Two, don’t pick up too many checks.

I need to keep working on myself for a while.

Every action has a consequence. It may be good for strengthening. And I have no doubt that lifting a lot of weights can get you stronger. I just don’t know if lifting stronger weights can keep you healthy, or it can keep you doing your job better, especially for a pro athlete.

The only service a friend can really render is to keep up your courage by holding up to you a mirror in which you can see a noble image of yourself.

Even with all the advantages of retrospect, and a lot of witnesses dead and gone, you can’t make your life look as if you intended it or you were consistent. All you can show is how you dealt with various hands.

It was completely fruitless to quarrel with the world, whereas the quarrel with oneself was occasionally fruitful and always, she had to admit, interesting.

Nothing is ever done in this world until men are prepared to kill one another if it is not done.

Some Christians feel guilty when they are doing something that isn’t ‚spiritual.‘ Somehow or another, they feel the need to hurry through the grocery store, dash through the house cleaning, and rush through all the daily aspects of life that seem irrelevant to their faith.

I like to recede away from classifications. You might say that indicates a fundamental lack of commitment. I suppose that’s true to some degree.

Nothing good ever comes of violence.

The value of beauty and inspiration is very much underrated, no question. But I want to be clear: I’m not trying to be anyone’s savior. I’m just trying to think about the future and not be sad.

Either you’re the one erasing or you’re the one being erased.

History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.

First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.

Justice is an unassailable fortress, built on the brow of a mountain which cannot be overthrown by the violence of torrents, nor demolished by the force of armies.

Children say that people are hung sometimes for speaking the truth.

Too often in life, something happens and we blame other people for us not being happy or satisfied or fulfilled. So the point is, we all have choices, and we make the choice to accept people or situations or to not accept situations.

No one has ever learned fully to know themselves.

I am the only person in the world I should like to know thoroughly.

Our intention creates our reality.

I used to worry about every little thing, trying to figure out every problem. Well, I realize now how foolish that was. I was no more in control of my life than the man on the moon.

Do not keep saying to yourself, if you can possibly avoid it, ‚But how can it be like that?‘ because you will get ‚down the drain,‘ into a blind alley from which nobody has yet escaped. Nobody knows how it can be like that.