I've spent my life cultivating knowledge of myself. But the more I know myself, the more utterly mysterious I become.

Compassion begins with the acknowledgment of the single inescapable truth that is the foundation for the possibility of love between human beings - an awareness of the tragic sense of life.

To love is to return to a home we never left, to remember who we are.

When you genuinely lose your illusions, you begin to marvel at things, because you don't have the answers any more.

Our society has been eaten up by the economic view of things, which routinely forces us to work at jobs that don't mean anything.

There is no easy formula for determining right and wrong livelihood, but it is essential to keep the question alive. To return the sense of dignity and honor to manhood, we have to stop pretending that we can make a living at something that is trivial or destructive and still have sense of legitimate self-worth. A society in which vocation and job are separated for most people gradually creates an economy that is often devoid of spirit, one that frequently fills our pocketbooks at the cost of emptying our souls.

The root of humanly caused evil is not man's animal nature, not territorial aggression, or innate selfishness, but our need to gain self-esteem, deny our mortality, and achieve a heroic self-image. Our desire for the best is the cause of the worst.