There is no more irritating fellow than the man who tries to settle an argument about communism, or justice, or liberty, by quoting from Webster.

If you are reading in order to become a better reader, you cannot read just any book or article. You will not improve as a reader if all you read are books that are well within your capacity. You must tackle books that are beyond you, or, as we have said, books that are over your head. Only books of that sort will make you stretch your mind. And unless you stretch, you will not learn.

Love can be unselfish, in the sense of being benevolent and generous, without being selfless.

In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but how many can get through to you.

I find the selectivity of erotic love - the choice of this man or this woman - much more intelligible if liking the person is the origin of sexual interest, rather than the other way.

Television, radio, and all the sources of amusement and information that surround us in our daily lives are also artificial props. They can give us the impression that our minds are active, because we are required to react to stimuli from the outside. But the power of those external stimuli to keep us going is limited. They are like drugs. We grow used to them, and we continuously need more and more of them. Eventually, they have little or no effect. Then, if we lack resources within ourselves, we cease to grow intellectually, morally, and spiritually. And we we cease to grow, we begin to die.

Erotic or sexual love can truly be love if it is not selfishly sexual or lustful.