“No wonder we cannot appreciate the really central Kafka joke: that the horrific struggle to establish a human self results in a self whose humanity is inseparable from the horrific struggle. That our endless and impossible journey toward home is in fact our home.”
“An education is not so much about making a living as making a person.”
“It is not that we love to be alone, but that we love to soar, and when we do soar, the company grows thinner and thinner until there is none at all. …We are not the less to aim at the summits though the multitude does not ascend them.”
“The job facing production managers focuses on how to help their team maintain hope while also addressing the sometimes brutal or dismal facts of their situation. If the truth of their position remains unseen, they will never grow the skills necessary to resolve it.”
“Wide differences of opinion in matters of religious, political, and social belief must exist if conscience and intellect alike are not to be stunted, if there is to be room for healthy growth.”
“When every situation which life can offer is turned to the profit of spiritual growth, no situation can really be a bad one.”
“Going back after a long time will make you mad, because the people you left behind do not like to think of you changed, will treat you as they always did, accuse you of being indifferent, when you are only different.”
“There is a moment in our healing journey when our denial crumbles; we realize our experience and it s continued effects on us won t just go away . That s our breakthrough moment. It s the sun coming out to warm the seeds of hope so they can grow our personal garden of empowerment.”
“If experience is the best teacher, there s nothing that comes close to the experience of life.”
“Every test successfully met is rewarded by some growth in intuitive knowledge, strengthening of character, or initiation into a higher consciousness.”
“Sunrise paints the sky with pinks and the sunset with peaches. Cool to warm. So is the progression from childhood to old age.”
“I m tired of my life, my clothes, the things I say. I m hacking away at the surface, as at some kind of gray ice, trying to break through to what is underneath or I am dead. I can feel the surface trembling—it seems ready to give but it never does. I am uninterested in current events. How can I justify this? How can I explain it? I don t want to have the same vocabulary I ve always had. I want something richer, broader, more penetrating and powerful.”
“Summer is only the unfulfilled promise of spring, a charlatan in place of the warm balmy nights I dream of in April. It’s a sad season of life without growth…It has no day.”
“When I speak of life and love as expanding with age, sex seems the least important thing. At any age we grow by the enlarging of consciousness, by learning a new language, or a new art or craft (gardening?) that implies a new way of looking at the universe. Love is one of the great enlargers of the person because it requires us to take in the stranger and to understand him, and to exercise restraint and tolerance as well as imagination to make the relationship work.”
“Science is only a Latin word for knowledge”
“After all, people may really have in them some vocation which is not quite plain to themselves, may they not? They may seem idle and weak because they are growing. We should be very patient with each other, I think.”
“Don t allow the pride, ego and insecurities of others stunt your growth.”