The art of listening needs its highest development in listening to oneself; our most important task is to develop an ear that can really hear what we're saying.

We can often endure an extra pound of pain far more easily than we can suffer the withdrawal of an ounce of accustomed pleasure.

Marriages we regard as the happiest are those in which each of the partners believes he or she got the best of it.

Nice things are done for our own sake, not for the sake of others. The pleasure must reside in the performance, not in the applause. Good deeds are, in a deeper psychological way, a favor to oneself. If this is not grasped, then our whole sense of personal relationships becomes warped.

Once we assuage our conscience by calling something a "necessary evil", it begins to look more and more necessary and less and less evil.

Self-discipline without talent can often achieve astounding results, whereas talent without self-discipline inevitably dooms itself to failure.

When we inform, we lead from strength; when we communicate, we lead from weakness—and it is precisely this confession of mortality that engages the ears, heads and hearts of those we want to enlist as allies in a common cause.