IT COSTS SO much to be a full human being that there are very few who have
the enlightenment or the courage to pay the price. One has to abandon
altogether the search for security and reach out to the risk of living with
both arms open. One has to embrace the world like a lover. One has to accept
pain as a condition of existence. One has to court doubt and darkness as the
cost of knowing. One needs a will stubborn in conflict, but apt always to
total acceptance of every consequence of living and dying.

For every human problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and
wrong.

Attachment to spiritual things is . . . just as much an attachment as inordinate love of anything else.

It is easier to build strong children, than to repair broken men.

We stumble and fall constantly, even when we are most enlightened.

Humility is the surest sign of strength.

. . . the degradation of the sense of symbol in modern society is one of its many signs of spiritual decay.

Contemplation is the keen awareness of the interdependence of all things.

Do not look for rest in any pleasure, because you were not created for pleasure: you were created for Joy. And if you do not know the difference between pleasure and joy you have not yet begun to live.

In Louisville, at the corner of 4th and Walnut,
        in the center of the shopping district,
        I was suddenly overwhelmed by the realization
        that I loved these people,
        that they were mine and I was theirs,
        that we could not be alien to one another . . . .
        It was like waking from a dream of separateness,
        of spurious self-isolation in a special world,
        the world of renunciation and supposed holiness. . . . . .

The sense of liberation from illusory difference
       was such a relief to me that I almost laughed out loud . . . .

       My happiness could have taken the form of the words,

       ‘Thank God I am like other men,
             that I am only a man among other men . . . .’

It is a glorious destiny to be a member of the human race,
       though it is a race dedicated to many absurdities
       and one which makes terrible mistakes;
       yet, with all that,
               God himself gloried in becoming
               a member of the human race.