Thank you, God, for the dignity and beauty of self. The precious innate self. The only thing that can't be taken from us. The only thing we really own.

simply to ask a blessing upon one's circumstances, whatever they are, is somehow to improve them, and to tap some mysterious source of energy and joy.

Let me remember that each life must follow its own course, and that what happens to other people has absolutely nothing to do with what happens to me.

Young women especially have something invested in being nice people, and it's only when you have children that you realize you're not a nice person at all, but generally a selfish bully.

some people seem to graze like sheep in the placid pastures of their faith. Some of them were born there and never broke away ... Others, after some wandering, found shelter there and are quiet and content. They look with a bland mystification at the mavericks.

One day you're racing about the business of life, harried but vital, a part of its machinery. Then gradually but inexorably you are left out, until one day you find the machinery tearing along without you - and nobody even notices.

Man is the only creature whose emotions are entangled with his memory.