Sometimes pain is easier to bear alone than happiness.

As you grow in self-esteem, your face, manner, way of talking and moving will tend naturally to project the pleasure you take in being alive.

For the rational, psychologically healthy man, the desire for pleasure is the desire to celebrate his control over reality. For the neurotic, the desire for pleasure is the desire to escape from reality.

Fully to surrender to love can be terrifying. But it is the price life asks in exchange for the possibility of ecstasy.

For children mastery entails struggle. This means they must be permitted to struggle. If parents inappropriately step in to "help"-out of impatience or solicitude-they sabotage important learning. Among other things, the child is unlikely to discover the advantages of perseverance and self-discipline.

To love is to see myself in you and to wish to celebrate myself with you. What I love is the embodiment of my values in another person. Love is an act of self-assertion, self-expression and a celebration of being alive.

The stability we cannot find in the world, we must create within our own persons.