Truth, when we are fortunate enough to find it, is like bad-tasting medicine. It rarely comes as a pleasant surprise, because if it surprises us, it means we've been denying it for some time and have a lot of beliefs based on falsehood. It's hard to give up those beliefs.

The essence of training is to allow error without consequence.

And yet.. even if you had been right, it would only have been by accident. A broken clock is right two times a day.

O my son Absalom,' Bean said softly, knowing for the first time the kind of anguish that could tear such words from a man’s mouth. 'my son, my son Absalom. Would God I could die for thee, O Absalom, my son. My sons!

His vices were the vices of his time and culture, but his virtues transcended the milieu of his life.

We thought we were the only thinking beings in the universe, until we met you, but never did we dream that thought could arise from the lonely animals who cannot dream each other's dreams

If I wanted to doubt, then I could doubt endlessly, but at some point a person has to stop questioning and act, and at that point you have to trust something to be true. You have to act as if something is true, and so you choose the thing you have the most reason to believe in, you have to live in the world that you have the most hope in.