“As for you, Man, you will be a naked tool all your life, though a user of tools. You will look like an embryo till they bury you, but all the others will be embryos before your might. Eternally undeveloped, you will always remain potential in Our image, able to see some of Our sorrows and to feel some of Our joys. We are partly sorry for you, Man, but partly hopeful. Run along then, and do your best.”

“...are you a person - with volition and maybe some stubborness and at least the capacity if not the actual determination to do something surprising - or are you a tool? A tool just serves its user. It's only as good as the skill of its user, and its not good for anything else. So if you want to accomplish something special - something more than you can do for yourself - you can't use a tool. You have to use a person and hope the surprises will work in your favor. You have to use something that's free to not be what you had in mind.”

“We're not God. All we can do is our best. But when I look at you... I get the feeling that the limit of "your best" is up to you.”

“It is not by regretting what is irreparable that true work is to be done, but by making the best of what we are. It is not by complaining that we have not the right tools, but by using well the tools we have. What we are, and where we are is God's providential arrangement - God's doing, though it may be man's misdoing; and the manly and the wise way is to look your disadvantages in the face, and see what can be made our of them.”

“When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight. Some of you say, "Joy is greater than sorrow," and others say, "Nay, sorrow is the greater."But I say unto you, they are inseparable. Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed. Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy.”

“...are you a person with volition and maybe some stubbornness and at least the capacity if not the actual determination to do something surpring or are you a tool? A tool just serves it's user, and it's not good for anything else. So if you want to accomplich something special -something more than you can do for yourself - you can't use a tool. You have to use a person and hope the surprises will work in your favor. You have to use something that's free to not be what you had in mind.”