“You will find that our enemies are our own kin. It is they who betray us. So learn this most important lesson-in the end, our worst enemy is ourselves”

“I did not hesitate to tell them that I not only had the authority of facts, but that it was my conviction that our worst enemy was ourselves, our vanity, our pride and our desire for honor.”

“There is nothing in the world which an artist cannot recreate into something poetic, ennobling. And why do we read these things? They are not facts, they do not improve our business skills, our techniques in manufacturing goods, the management of a home. That is what most of you will be doing anyway. We read these because they teach us about people, we can see ourselves in them, in their problems. And by seeing ourselves in them, we clarify ourselves, we explain ourselves to ourselves, so we can live with ourselves…”

“Never, never hide your pain, scream as if you are dying so you will not be harmed more. Never, never hide your poverty, too. The worst enemies of the poor are the poor themselves. And never, never appear that you are virtuous and without sin. It it is the virtuous who have many enemies because for they shame the many without virtue.”

“We do not conquer life, no one can conquer what one cannot define, but at least it is there and it is ours to shape and to possess fully, with all the senses working, with all the powers of the heart surging, as we search for the answer to the greatest riddle of them all- death, the ultimate end, the enemy of all men, the final quietus to the noblest of emotions, the tenacity and ethereal creativity of faith.”

“We compromise ourselves the day we are born. If we are looking for the original sin, there it is- our incapacity to live honestly with ourselves because we are human, because we are shackled by custom, by obligations and we accept compromise only in the light of our conscience, answerable as we are only to ourselves.”

“We go from one darkness to another and in between, the hidden light of the world, of knowledge. We open our eyes and in this circle of light, we see not just ourselves but others who are our likenesses. This light tells us all men are brothers, but even brothers kill one another, and it is in this light where all this happens. But living in this dazzling light does not blind us to what lies beyond the darkness from where we emerged and where we are going. It is faith which makes our journey possible though it be marred by the unkindness of men, their eternal faulting, before we pass on to another darkness.”