At the root of fear is low self-esteem. This explains why angry people have low self-esteem, are argumentative, stubborn, and quick to flare up yet slow to forgive. Those behaviors are defenses against the underlying fear.

If you know how much reality is getting in, then you know a great deal about what a person sees to be true.

Consider, for example, lust versus love. When we lust after someone or something, we think in terms of what they (or it) can do for us. When we love, however, our thoughts are immersed in what we can give to someone else. Giving makes us feel good, so we do it happily. But when we lust, we only want to take. When someone we love is in pain, we feel pain. When someone whom we lust is in pain, we only think in terms of what that loss or inconvenience means to us.

Freedom is the crux of self-respect. It is difficult to feel good about ourselves when we are unnaturally dependent on someone or something.

The guilty are uncomfortable with silence.

Our focus is our reality. What we choose to focus on becomes our world. It produces our thoughts, values, attitudes, and beliefs.

True freedom is not about being able to do whatever we feel like doing; rather, it is about being able to do what we truly want to do, in spite of what we feel like doing at the moment.