That I should die next week, I would still be able to sit at my desk all week and study with perfect equanimity, for I know now that life and death make a meaningful whole.

Here, beside this great black surface that is my desk, I feel as though I am on a desert island.

How rash to assert that man shapes his own destiny. All he can do is determine his inner responses.

I think what weakens people most is fear of wasting their strength.

Each of us must turn inward and destroy in himself all that he thinks he ought to destroy in others.

I don’t want to be anything special. I only want to try to be true to that in me which seeks to fulfill its promise.

Sometimes the most important thing in a whole day is the rest we take between two deep breaths, or the turning inwards in prayer for five short minutes.