...perhaps charity is the kind of beauty that we comprehend the best because we miss it the most.

A capacity for inferiority in the growing adult is threatened by the temptation by squander that capacity ruthlessly, to revel in hallowness. The syndrom especially plaques anyone who lives behind a mask. An elephant in her disquise as a human princess, a scarecrow with painted features, a glittering tiara under which to glow and glide in anonymous glamour. A witch's hat, a wizards stole, a scholars gown, a soldiers dress sartorials. A hundred ways to duck the question: how will I live with myself now that I nkow what I know.

Sorrow has a name, and its name is loneliness. Sorrow has a shape, and its shape is absence. Sorrow is a sickness like any other.

Yes, I'm nervous. You'll find in time most people are. They simply learn better how to disguise it, and sometimes, if they're wise, how to use their anxiety to serve the public good.

It's the endlessly thinking about yourself that causes such heart shame.

I learned failure early and mastered it.

Science, my dears, is the systematic dissection of nature, to reduce it to working parts that more or less obey universal laws. Sorcery moves in the opposite direction. It doesn't rend, it repairs. It is synthesis rather than analysis. It builds anew rather than revealing the old. In the hands of someone truly skilled,...it is Art.