“Your teacher might be a child who takes you by the hand and asks you a question that you hadn't considered before, and your answer to the child is your answer to yourself.”

“The teacher asks a question.You know the answer, you suspectyou are the only one in the classroom who knows the answer, because the personin question is yourself, and on that you are the greatest living authority,but you don’t raise your hand.You raise the top of your deskand take out an apple.You look out the window.You don’t raise your hand and there issome essential beauty in your fingers,which aren’t even drumming, but lie flat and peaceful.The teacher repeats the question. Outside the window, on an overhanging branch,a robin is ruffling its feathersand spring is in the air.”

“You say you are a nameless man. You are not to your wife and to your child. You will not long remain so to your immediate colleagues if you can answer their simple questions when they come into your office. You are not nameless to me. Do not remain nameless to yourself — it is too sad a way to be. Know your place in the world and evaluate yourself fairly, not in terms of the naïve ideals of your own youth, nor in terms of what you erroneously imagine your teacher's ideals are.”

“I know now, Lord, why you utter no answer. You are yourself the answer. Before your face questions die away. What other answer would suffice?”

“Imagine that you are more than nothing. Evil made you, but you are no more evil than a child unborn. If you want, if you seek, if you hope, who is to say that your hope might not be answered?”

“If you ask a living teacher a question, he will probably answer you. If you are puzzled by what he says, you can save yourself the trouble of thinking by asking him what he means. If, however, you ask a book a question, you must answer it yourself. In this respect a book is like nature or the world. When you question it, it answers you only to the extent that you do the work of thinking an analysis yourself.”