Anyone who really loves you wants you to be authentic. And anyone who doesn't want you to be authentic doesn't really love you.

Live with integrity, respect the rights of other people, and follow your own bliss.

Stressing the practice of living purposefully as essential to fully realized self-esteem is not equivalent to measuring an individual's worth by his or her external achievements. We admire achievements-in ourselves and others-and it is natural and appropriate for us to do so. But that is not the same thing as saying that our achievements are the measure or grounds of our self-esteem. The root of our self-esteem is not our achievements but those internally generated practices that, among other things, make it possible for us to achieve.

It is true that people are sometimes hit by adversities beyond their control. But those so affected are better helped when they are awakened to the resources they do possess than when they are told they don't have any.

It is naive to think that self-assertiveness is easy. To live self-assertively--which means to live authentically--is an act of high courage. That is why so many people spend the better part of their lives in hiding--from others and also from themselves.

No one is coming to save you.

Suffering is just about the easiest of all human activities; being happy is just about the hardest. And happiness requires, not surrender to guilt, but emancipation from guilt.