Science may not be as intimate as the medical profession; nonetheless, it certainly is a community in which ideas are often shared as contributions, not as proprietary things.

Erik Erikson has commented: Potentially creative men like (Bernard) Shaw build the personal fundament of their work during a self-decreed moratorium, during which they often starve themselves, socially, erotically, and, at last but not least, nutritionally, in order to let the grosser weeds die out, and make way for the growth of their inner garden.

We are only alive to the degree that we can let ourselves be moved.

The gift finds the man attractive who stands with an empty bowl he does not own.

To be a great teacher, you can't simply be looking at how to earn your income. And with a priest or spiritual leader - there's another relationship that makes those lives what they are. And in each of these cases you'll find elements of gift exchange thriving, and you'll also find a tension around it.

True citizens are not the audience of their government, nor its consumers; they are its makers.

An anaesthetic is a poet-killer.