When I heard you cry I followed you, and saw you put down your handkerchief, screwed up, with its rage, with its hate, knotted in it.

I was fighting with Thoby on the lawn. We were pommelling each other with our fists. Just as I raised my fist to hit him, I felt: why hurt another person? I dropped my hand instantly, and stood there, and let him beat me. I remember the feeling. It was a feeling of hopeless sadness. It was as if I became aware of something terrible; and of my own powerlessness. I slunk off alone, feeling horribly depressed.

I addressed my self as one would speak to a companion with whom one is voyaging to the North Pole.

She felt somehow very like him—the young man who had killed himself.

I find it much easier to counsel than to be counseled, to reach out to a friend in my small group who is feeling insercure than to reveal my own inseurity. The truth is we don't much like being dependent. We don't enjoy admitting how depeately we long for someone's kindness and involvement. It's so humbling.

When spiritual friends share their stories, the others listen without working. They rest. There's nothing to fix, nothing to improve. A spiritual community feels undisturbed quiet as they listen, certainly burdened . . . but still resting in the knowledge that the life within, the passion for holiness, is indestructible. It needs only to be nourished and released.

I used to tremble from nerves so badly that the only way I could hold my head steady was to lower my chin practically to my chest and look up at Bogie. That was the beginning of The Look.

The men, who learn endurance, are they who call the whole world, brother.

A silent look of affection and regard when all other eyes are turned coldly away--the consciousness that we possess the sympathy and affection of one being when all others have deserted us--is a hold, a stay, a comfort, in the deepest affliction, which no wealth could purchase, or power bestow.

"Do not repine, my friends," said Mr. Pecksniff, tenderly. "Do not weep for me. It is chronic."

No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another.

A day wasted on others is not wasted on one's self.