“We may not exactly be God, but we’re not exactly nothing, either.”

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.

Life is indistinguishable from effortful maintenance.

You’re not perfect just the way you are. You could be better!

Untruth corrupts the soul and the state alike, and one form of corruption feeds the other.

You have to learn to recognize your own depth.

You can ravish your woman so deeply that her surrender breaks your heart into light.

When you’re over the hill, that’s when you pick up speed.

For years I could not cry. And I thought there was something wrong with me. Turns out I was crying after all – just not in tears.

Without followers, evil cannot spread.

The world is already yours – why try to conquer it?

We do not need a censorship of the press. We have a censorship by the press… It is not we who silence the press. It is the press who silences us.

Men are wary of me because they know, by listening to my music, that a relationship with me will be quite deep.