What he had yearned to embrace was not the flesh but a down spirit, a spark, the impalpable angel that inhabits the flesh.

To be a man is to feel that one's own stone contributes to building the edifice of the world.

Here is my secret. It is very simple: one sees well only with the heart. The essential is invisible to the eyes.

The friend within the man is that part of him which belongs to you and opens to you a door which never, perhaps, is opened to another. Such a friend is true, and all he says is true; and he loves you even if he hates you in other mansions of his heart.

The important thing is to strive toward a goal which is not immediately visible. That goal is not the concern of the mind, but of the spirit.

My senses of space, of distance, and of direction entirely vanished. When I looked for the ground I sometimes looked down, sometimes up, sometimes left, sometimes right. I thought I was very high up when I would suddenly be thown to earth in a near vertical spin. I thought I was very low to the ground and I was pulled up to 3,000 feet in two minutes by the 500-horsepower motor. It danced, it pushed, it tossed. . . . Ah! la la!

The one thing that matters is the effort.