Self-Sufficiency

must look at you with the eyes of David in Psalm 139:

The fatal flaw of human wisdom is that it promises that you can change your relationships without needing to change yourself.

What tendency do you observe in your life?

Playing in a city like Norman, where it's all about Oklahoma football. A no-brainer for me.

Just as there is nothing between the admirable omelet and the intolerable, so with autobiography.

The most difficult secret for a man to keep is his own opinion of himself.

The sitter is merely the accident, the occasion. It is not he who is revealed by the painter; it is rather the painter who, on the coloured canvas, reveals himself. The reason I will not exhibit this picture is that I am afraid that I have shown in it the secret of my own soul.

People used to say of me that I was too individualistic. I must be far more of an individualist than ever I was. I must get far more out of myself than ever I got, and ask far less of the world than ever I asked. Indeed, my ruin came not from too great individualism of life, but from too little. The one disgraceful, unpardonable, and to all time contemptible action of my life was to allow myself to appeal to society for help and protection.

The aim of life is self-development. To realise one's nature perfectly-that is what each of us is here for. People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to one's self.

Other people are quite dreadful.  The only possible society is oneself.

The reason we all like to think so well of others is that we are all afraid for ourselves. The basis of optimism is sheer terror. We think that we are generous because we credit our neighbour with the possession of those virtues that are likely to be a benefit to us.