I came to the conclusion that I am free to choose my own suffering. But I am not free to consent to someone else's suffering.

No one is as capable of gratitude as one who has emerged from the kingdom of night. We know that every moment is a moment of grace, every hour an offering; not to share them would mean to betray them. Our lives no longer belong to us alone; they belong to all those who need us desperately.

Ultimately, the only power to which man should aspire is that which he exercises over himself.

There are moments when I think it will never end, that it will last indefinitely. It's like the rain. Here the rain, like everything else, suggests permanence and eternity. I say to myself: it's raining today and it's going to rain tomorrow and the next day, the next week and the next century.

[Tibet] never sought any territory. All it wanted is the conquest of the soul, that people should attain a kind of inner sovereignty, inner independence, inner freedom. And inner strength to attain the absolute.

Occasionally, I come to moments of anguish in the text.

In the concentration camps, we discovered this whole universe where everyone had his place. The killer came to kill, and the victims came to die.