One might equate growing up with a mistrust of words. A mature person trusts his eyes more than his ears. Irrationality often manifests itself in upholding the word against the evidence of the eyes. Children, savages and true believers remember far less what they have seen than what they have heard.

Help your sister's boat across the water, and yours too will reach the other side. Kindness can become its own motive. We are made kind by being kind.

It is not actual suffering but the taste of better things which excites people to revolt.

Resistance, whether to one's appetites or to the ways of the world, is a chief factor in the shaping of character.

The link between ideas and action is rarely direct. There is almost always an intermediate step in which the idea is overcome.

Action is basically a reaction against loss of balance - a flailing of the arms to to regain one's balance. To dispose a soul to action, we must upset its equilibrium.

We have to adjust ourselves, and every radical adjustment is a crisis in self-esteem: we undergo a test, we have to prove ourselves.