Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for the lost faith in ourselves.

We can be satisfied with moderate confidence in ourselves and with a moderately good opinion of ourselves, but the faith we have in a holy cause has to be extravagant and uncompromising.

Even in slight things the experience of the new is rarely without some stirring of foreboding.

Our greatest pretenses are built up not to hide the evil and the ugly in us, but our emptiness. The hardest thing to hide is something that is not there.

The most gifted members of the human species are at their creative best when they cannot have their way.

Our credulity is greatest concerning the things we know least about. And since we know least about ourselves, we are ready to believe all that is said about us. Hence the mysterious power of both flattery and calumny.

Death has but one terror, that it has no tomorrow.

There is need for some kind of make-believe in order to face death unflinchingly. To our real, naked selves there is not a thing on earth or in heaven worth dying for.

There is a time when the word "eventually" has the soothing effect of a promise, and a time when the word evokes in us bitterness and scorn.

Often, the thing we pursue most passionately is but a substitute for the one thing we really want and cannot have.