We can be satisfied with moderate confidence in ourselves and with a moderately good opinion of ourselves, but the faith we have in a holy cause has to be extravagant and uncompromising.

It takes a vice to check a vice, and virtue is the by-product of a stalemate between opposite vices.

When we are in competition with ourselves, and match our todays against our yesterdays, we derive encouragement from past misfortunes and blemishes. Moreover, the competition with ourselves leaves unimpaired our benevolence toward our fellow men.

It is a sign of creeping inner death when we can no longer praise the living.

It is thus with most of us; we are what other people say we are. We know ourselves chiefly by hearsay.

You rarely find a nonconformist who goes it alone.

Often, the thing we pursue most passionately is but a substitute for the one thing we really want and cannot have.