But one of the worst results of being a slave and being forced to do things is that when there is no one to force you any more you find you have almost lost the power of forcing yourself.

People shouldn't call for demons unless they really mean what they say.

The most deeply compelled action is also the freest action. By that I mean, no part of you is outside the action.

Who will take medicine unless he knows he is in the grip of disease?

Once in those very early days my brother brought into the nursery the lid of a biscuit tin which he had covered with moss and garnished with twigs and flowers so as to make it a toy garden or a toy forest. That was the first beauty I ever knew. What the real garden had failed to do, the toy garden did. It made me aware of nature-not, indeed, as a storehouse of forms and colors but as something cool, dewy, fresh, exuberant....As long as I live my imagination of Paradise will retain something of my brother's toy garden.

Selfishness has never been admired.

If the world is meaningless, then so are we; if we mean something, we do not mean alone.