“Begin by treating yourself as if you were someone you were responsible for helping.”

Alongside our wish to be free of rules, we all search for structure.

There’s a worthy and noble ambition: strength in the face of adversity. That is very different from the wish for a life free of trouble.

We are increasingly falling prey to the desperation of meaninglessness.

That the soul of the individual eternally hungers for the heroism of genuine being.

The better ambitions have to do with the development of character and ability, rather than status and power. The status you can lose. You carry character with you wherever you go, and it allows you to prevail against adversity.

You should never sacrifice what you could be for what you are.

We require routine and tradition. That’s order. Order can become excessive, and that’s not good, but chaos can swamp us, so we drown – and that is also not good. We need to stay on the straight and narrow path.

Don’t ever underestimate the destructive power of sins of omission.

There’s some real utility in gratitude. It’s also good protection against the dangers of victimhood and resentment.

It is far better to render beings in your care competent than to protect them.

It is far better to render beings in your car competent than to protect them.

Old age and treachery can always overcome youth and skill.

You cannot be protected from the things that frighten you and hurt you, but if you identify with the part of your being that is responsible for transformation, then you are always the equal, or more than the equal of the things that frighten you.

Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street.

So, listen, to yourself and to those with whom you are speaking. Your wisdom then consists not of the knowledge you already have, but the continual search for knowledge, which is the highest form of wisdom.

When existence reveals itself as existentially intolerable, thinking collapses in on itself. In such situations – in the depths—it’s noticing, not thinking, that does the trick.

Don’t prepare. Begin. Our enemy is not lack of preparation. The enemy is resistance, our chattering brain producing excuses. Start before you are ready.

I began working with a family camera. It was called a Kodak Autographic, which was one of those things where you flopped it open and pulled out the bellows. And I’ve been at it ever since – I’ve never stopped.

One cannot choose how one’s life begins but one can choose to face the end with courage

The place to begin the task of eliminating evil is within yourself.

There’s a story behind everything but behind all your stories is always your mother’s story because hers is where yours begins.

The highest manifestation of true leadership is to identify one’s replacement and to begin mentoring him or her.

Begin where you are; work where you are; the hour which you are now wasting, dreaming of some far off success may be crowded with grand possibilities.

I can feel hope beginning to sprout from all parts of me that were once punctured.