Consciousness is the awareness that emerges out of the dialectical tension between possibilities and limitations.

Intimacy requires courage because risk is inescapable. We cannot know at the outset how the relationship will affect us. Like a chemical mixture, if one of us is changed, both of us will be. Will we grow in self-actualization, or will it destroy us? The one thing we can be certain of is that if we let ourselves fully into the relationship for good or evil, we will not come out unaffected.

We must always base our commitment in the center of our own being, or else no commitment will be ultimately authentic.

We receive love — from our children as well as others — not in proportion to our demands or sacrifices or needs, but roughly in proportion to our own capacity to love.

Courage is not the absence of despair; it is, rather, the capacity to move ahead in spite of despair.

It is well to remind ourselves that anxiety signifies a conflict, and so long as a conflict is going on, a constructive solution is possible.

One of the few blessings of living in an age of anxiety is that we are forced to become aware of ourselves.