A great maxim of personal responsibility and mature achievement: "Do it yourself" is now the enthroned cliche for being occupied with nonessentials.

Ours is not so much an age of vulgarity as of vulgarization; everything is tampered with or touched up, or adulterated or watered down, in an effort to make it palatable, in an effort to make it pay.

With intellectuals, moral thought is often less a tonic that quickens ethical action than a narcotic that deadens it.

Ours must be the first age whose great goal, on a nonmaterial plane, is not fulfillment but adjustment; and perhaps just such a goal has served as maladjustment's weapon.

Today's competitiveness, so much imposed from without, is exhausting, not exhilarating; is unending-a part of one's social life, one's solitude, one's sleep, one's sleeplessness.

Having disciples is in the end like having children, only not with love but with self-love preeminent.

In an automobile civilization, which was one of constant motion and activity, there was almost no time to think; in a television one, there is small desire.