Visiting someone in a hospital recently, I watched an elderly couple. The man was in a wheelchair, the wife sitting next to him in the visitors' room. For the half-hour that I watched they never exchanged a word, just held hands and looked at each other, and once or twice the man patted his wife's face. The feeling of love was so thick in that room that I felt I was sharing in their communion and was shaken all day by their pain, their love, something sad and also joyful: the fullness of a human relationship.

Excellence in life seems to me to be the way in which each human being makes the most of the adventure of living and becomes most truly and deeply himself, fulfilling his own nature in the context of a good life with other people.

A baby is like the beginning of all things: wonder, hope a dream of possibilities. In a world that is cutting down its trees to build highways, losing its earth to concrete, babies are almost the only remaining link in nature, with the natural world of living things from which we spring.

... no man can be psychologically castrated without his co-operation!

most of us carry into marriage not only our childlike illusions, but we bring to it as well the demand that it has to be wonderful, because it's supposed to be.

We found ... that being a good parent to one's own child was never and in no way enough; until we were all responsible for all the children of the world, no child would ever be safe, no society could survive.

Depression occurs when you are not being yourself. You're probably doing things you don't want to do.