If we had a better understanding of the ways we think about enemies, we might be able to think of more rational ways of settling conflict.

The sacred is discovered in what moves and touches us, in what makes us tremble.

The Greeks invented the idea of nemesis to show how any single virtue, stubbornly maintained gradually changes into a destructive vice. Our success, our industry, our habit of work have produced our economic nemesis. Work made modern men great, but now threatens to usurp our souls, to inundate the earth in things and trash, to destroy our capacity to love and wonder.

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.

I think we have to trust ourselves in the darkness of not knowing. The God out of which we came and into which we go is an unknown God. It's the luminosity of that darkness and that unknowing that is, I think, the most human - and the most sacred - place of all.

To be on a quest is nothing more or less than to become an asker of questions.

The more you become a connoisseur of gratitude, the less you are a victim of resentment, depression, and despair. Gratitude will act as an elixir that will gradually dissolve the hard shell of your ego-your need to posses and control-and transform you into a generous being. The sense of gratitude produces true spiritual alchemy, makes us magnanimous-lar ge souled.