I can and do aspire to be greater than the sum total of my experiences, but I accept my limitations. I willingly accept that we who judge must not deny the differences resulting from experience and heritage but attempt, as the Supreme Court suggests, continuously to judge when those opinions, sympathies and prejudices are appropriate.

"To fashion stars out of dog dung, that is the Great Work. To take a negative experience and, by comparing it to something worse, make it feel good, is the great skill."

I find, the older I get, the more surprised I am about how hesitant people are to say what they really want, what they really dream about, what really drives them. It's as if sometimes we're sort of embarrassed, as we get older, to be transparent about that. But you save so much time if you're transparent about what you want.

One should not lose one's temper unless one is certain of getting more and more angry to the end.

Trials make more room for consolation. There is nothing that makes a man have a big heart like a great trial. I always find that little, miserable people, whose hearts are about the size of a grain of mustard seed, never have had much to try them. I have found that those people who have no sympathy for their fellows — who never weep for the sorrows of others — very seldom have had any woes of their own. Great hearts can only be made by great troubles.

In the Universe the difficult things are done as if they were easy.