It is the individual only who is timeless. Societies, cultures, and civilizations -- past and present -- are often incomprehensible to outsiders, but the individual's hungers, anxieties, dreams, and preoccupations have remained unchanged through the millenia.

To believe that if we could have but this or that we would be happy is to suppress the realization that the cause of our unhappiness is in our inadequate and blemished selves. Excessive desire is thus a means of suppressing our sense of worthlessness.

A man's worth is what he is divided by what he thinks he is.

The self-despisers are less intent on their own increase than on the diminution of others. Where self-esteem is unobtainable, envy takes the place of greed.

Compassion is the antitoxin of the soul.

The basic test of freedom is perhaps less in what we are free to do than in what we are free not to do.

The real Antichrist is he who turns the wine of an original idea into the water of mediocrity.