“Of all afflictions, the worst is self contempt.”

We consider it tedious to talk of the weather, and yet there is nothing more important.

Being alone when one’s belief is firm, is not to be alone.

What will people say-in these words lies the tyranny of the world, the whole destruction of our natural disposition, the oblique vision of our minds. These four words hold sway everywhere.

Years teach us more than books.

Gratitude is a soil on which joy thrives.

If you sound great in the practice room, you’re practicing the wrong thing. Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.

All men are selfish, but the vain man is in love with himself. He admires, like the lover his adored one, everything which to others is indifferent.

No mortal eye has ever fully seen a flash of lightning … for no matter how firmly we look, our eyes are sure to be dazzled.

Some men, like modern shops, hang everything in their show windows; when one goes inside, nothing is to be found.

Judaism lives not in an abstract creed, but in its institutions.

Truly, one gets easier accustomed to a silken bed than to a sack of leaves.

Weak men are easily put out of humor. Oil freezes quicker than water.

To acquire money requires valor, to keep money requires prudence, and to spend money well is an art.

It is only when one is thoroughly true that there can be purity and freedom. Falsehood always punishes itself.

To harbor hatred and animosity in the soul makes one irritable, gloomy, and prematurely old.

Only he is free who cultivates his own thoughts and strives without fear to do justice to them.

I am not talking about selfishness or self-interest. When I ask, What will make you happy?, I mean, What way of loving others feels right for you? Choose a way of loving that makes you happy, and your efforts will be play rather than work.

Money will hit me at a big off-period and genius will hit me in starvation, that is, I often get the money when I don’t think I deserve it and have been lolling around for days and days thinking the most abysmal thoughts.

we are doing God’s work. So God dresses in Eskimo clothing or other disguises, and responds to us whether or not we are aware enough to hear, see, or feel God’s loving guidance. Everything is a tool of God, from DNA to the weather.

When you wake up and act like a loving person, you realize not only that you are altered, but that the people around you are also transformed, because everybody is changed by the reception of this love.

The true measure of loving God is to love him without measure.

Loving someone condemns you to a lifetime of fear. You become painfully conscious of how fragile people are – bundles of brittle bones and vulnerable flesh, breeding grounds for billions of deadly germs and horrible diseases.

All the children stood and gazed at it, loving it and longing to go to it. It looked so secret – almost magic.

Psychedelics are illegal not because a loving government is concerned that you may jump out of a third story window.