The person who conveys, 'I am nothing. Make me something,' may all his life have people trying to answer his hidden plea, but their answer will be in terms of, 'I am trying to make you something because you are nothing,' and, thus, the insult will be embedded in the response. It will be heard just as clearly as the attempt to help. And it will be hated.

If life is envisioned as a continuously running motion picture, the keeping of a notebook stops the action and allows a meaningful scene to be explored frame by frame.

Examining love is like examining a stocking: if you hold it up to the light and stretch it to search for snags, any snags there are may well run and ruin the stocking. In fact, if I may fashion Coudert's law from Heisenberg's principle of indeterminacy, it is this: Love is not only changed by observation; it is changed for the worse.

It is characteristic to believe that those in need are given to, that the squeaky hinge is the one that gets the oil, but in the realm of emotions this is not so. It is the person who does not solicit liking and love, admiration and respect, sympathy and empathy to whom they are freely given.

Hardening of the hearteries is the most serious affliction besetting marriage, and warm, good-humored, approving words are the only effective preventive.

We can win the struggle to avoid responsibility for our personal lives, but if we do, what we lose is our lives.

People who are good to each other make each other good.