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.

Our dilemma is that we hate change and love it at the same time; what we really want is for things to remain the same but get better.

Maturity begins when we're content to feel we're right about something without feeling the necessity to prove someone else wrong.

The real heretic is not the atheist or agnostic (who are often decent people) but those who murmur "it doesn't matter what you believe, as long as it makes you feel good." This turns religion into a subjective matter, like taste in furnishings, and robs theology of its claim to ultimate truth.

Parents - and teachers too - are woefully short-sighted when they try to protect the child from his mistakes, when they make the "right answer" more important than the quest for knowledge and good judgment. For what is not learned within one's self cannot be learned from another.

When we have "second thoughts" about something, our first thoughts don't seem like thoughts at all - just feelings.

Filth is always a sign of weakness - in the mouth of the user and in the mind of the writer.