Every increase of needs tends to increase one's independence on outside forces over which one cannont have control and therefore increases existential fear

I cannot predict the wind but I can have my sail ready.

It has been universally recognized, in all authentic teachings of mankind, that every being born into this world has to work, not merely to keep himself alive, but to strive towards perfection.

I'm not at all contemptuous of comforts, but they have their place and it is not first.

Any intelligent fool can invent further complications, but it takes a genius to retain, or recapture, simplicity.

To describe an animal as a physico-chemical system of extreme complexityis no doubt perfectly correct, except that it misses out on the animalness of the animal.

Our ordinary mind always tries to persuade us that we are nothing but acorns and that our greatest happiness will be to become bigger, fatter, shinier acorns; but that is of interest only to pigs. Our faith gives us knowledge of something better: that we can become oak trees.