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.

The primary purpose of a liberal education is to make one's mind a pleasant place in which to spend one's leisure.

Ninety per cent of the world's woe comes from people not knowing themselves, their abilities, their frailties, and even their real virtues. Most of us go almost all the way through life as complete strangers to ourselves - so how can we know anyone else?

The best combination of parents consists of a father who is gentle beneath his firmness, and a mother who is firm beneath her gentleness.

Norbert Blei is a writer the way people used to be troubadours and minstrels, celebrating what he has seen and heart and felt in a deceptively simple style reminiscent of the early Sherwood Anderson. . . . Like Anderson, he is a lover, and his affection invests his writing with a singular charm.

If a small thing has the power to make you angry, does that not indicate something about your size?

If the devil could be persuaded to write a bible, he would title it, "You Only Live Once."