“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.”

To suffer terribly and to know yourself as the cause: that is Hell.

It is not virtuous to be victimized by a bully, even if that bully is oneself.

If you don’t say what you think then you kill your unborn self.

It’s appropriate and praiseworthy to associate with people whose lives would be improved if they saw your life improve.

Perhaps you are overvaluing what you don’t have and undervaluing what you do.

See the truth. Tell the truth.

Thus, you should never sacrifice what you could be for what you are.

You can only find out what you actually believe (rather than what you think you believe) by watching how you act.

Women select men. That makes them nature, because nature is what selects.

People who know what to expect from one another can act together to tame the world.

When you have something to say, silence is a lie.

When the aristocracy catches a cold, as it is said, the working class dies of pneumonia.

The purpose of life, as far as I can tell, is to find a mode of being that’s so meaningful that the fact that life is suffering is no longer relevant.

True thinking is rare – just like true listening.

It is better, proverbially, to rule your own spirit than to rule a city.

To act is literally to manifest preference about one set of possibilities, contrasted with an infinite set of alternatives. If we wish to live, we must act. Acting, we value.