The circumstances, including my body and my parents, whom I may curse, are my soul's own choice and I do not understand this because I have forgotten

Many people nowadays who discover that they have a major symptom, whether psychological or physical, begin to study it. They get drawn very deeply into the area of their trouble. They want to know more than their doctor. That's a curious thing, and not at all the way it used to be.

The easy path of aging is to become a thick-skinned, unbudging curmudgeon, a battle-ax. To grow soft and sweet is the harder way.

We need to work on the world so it will not be so oppressive.

The capacity for people to kid themselves is huge. Living on illusions or delusions, and the re-establishing of these illusions or delusions requires a big effort to keep them from being seen through. But a very old idea is at work behind our current state of affairs: enantiodromia, or the Greek notion of things turning into their opposite.

I don't think anything changes until ideas change.

What I try to point out is the role an ordinary person can have in seeing the child's destiny. You have to have a feeling for the child.