“To free desire from the tendency to cling, we have to be willing to stumble over ourselves.”

“A man is a free being who is always changing into himself. This changing is never merely indifferent. We are always getting either better or worse. Our development is measured by our acts of free choice, and we make ourselves by the patterns of our desires.If our desires reach out for the things that we were created to have and to make and to become, then we will develop into what we were truly meant to be.But if our desires reach out for things that have have no meaning for the growth of our spirit, if they lose themselves in dreams or passions or illusions, we will be false to ourselves and to other men and to God. We will judge ourselves as aliens and exiles from ourselves and from God.In hell, there is no recollection. The damned are exiled not only from God and from other men, but even from themselves.”

“...you have to leave the island in order to see the island, that we can't see ourselves unless we become free of ourselves, Unless we escape from ourselves you mean, No, that's not the same thing.”

“The greatest crimes do not arise from a want of feeling for others but from an over-sensibility for ourselves and an over-indulgence to our own desires”

“We depend on each other to lift ourselves up. Suffering is craving is fear is delusion clinging to selfhood, clinging to objects, clinging to the trivia that we think makes us happy. Clinging to superficialities. Clinging to the covering that separates us from each other. Strip off all that delusion, and we take a step forward toward each other and a step toward enlightenment.”

“Desires to which we cling closely can easily prevent us from being what we ought to be and can be; and on the other hand, desires repeatedly mastered for the sake of present duty make us richer.Lack of desire is poverty.”