How boring just to be a body.

It is the nature of aphoristic thinking to be always in a state of concluding; a bid to have the final word is inherent in all powerful phrase-making.

[O]ne person's 'barbarian' is another person's 'just doing what everybody else is doing.

Compassion is an unstable emotion. It needs to be translated into action, or it withers. The question is what to do with the feelings that have been aroused, the knowledge that has been communicated. People don't become inured to what they are shown — if that's the right way to describe what happens — because of the quantity of images dumped on them. It is passivity that dulls feeling.

The traditional metaphor for a spiritual investigation is that of the voyage or the journey. From this image I must dissociate myself. I do not consider myself a voyager, I have preferred to stand still.

A good listener: a physical presence that is warm, alert, intelligent - more important than any words.

Books are not only the arbitrary sum of our dreams, and our memory. They also give us the model of self-transcende nce.