“God sometimes removes a person from your life for your protection. Don't run after them.”

“Remember, the thoughts that you think and the statements you make regarding yourself determine your mental attitude. If you have a worthwhile objective, find the one reason why you can achieve it rather than hundreds of reasons why you can’t.”

“Later the island was turned into a leper colony, a lunatic asylum, and a naval base. The government had only recently turned the island back into a prison.”

“When we are confronted by failure and mistakes, we can leave them behind and go on with our lives.”

“Human knowledge and skills alone cannot lead humanity to a happy and dignified life.”

“Anyone who tries to keep all the people happy all the time will never fulfill their destiny.”

“Only the self-sufficient stand alone - most people follow the crowd and imitate.”

“I thought I saw how stories of this kind could steal past a certain inhibition which had paralysed much of my own religion in childhood. Why did one find it so hard to feel as one was told one ought to feel about God or the sufferings of Christ? I thought the chief reason was that one was told one ought to. An obligation to feel can freeze feelings. And reverence itself did harm. The whole subject was associated with lowered voices; almost as if it were something medical. But supposing that by casting all these things into an imaginary world, stripping them of their stained-glass and Sunday School associations, one could make them for the first time appear in their real potency? Could one not thus steal past those watchful dragons? I thought one could.”

“Self-condemnation means speaking against one's own success. If can't stop confirming your incompetencies for what you are competent for, you are unlikely do pursue your true purpose.”

“Our contribution to the progress of the world must, therefore, consist in setting our own house in order.”

“If it’s to be, it’s up to me!”

“My idea is to give hope, because where there is no hope, there is no vision, and where there is no vision, people will perish.”

“The quest of the Inner Ring will break your hearts unless you break it. But if you break it, a surprising result will follow. If in your working hours you make the work your end, you will presently find yourself all unawares inside the only circle in your profession that really matters. You will be one of the sound craftsmen, and other sound craftsmen will know it. This group of craftsmen will by no means coincide with the Inner Ring or the Important People or the People in the Know. It will not shape that professional policy or work up that professional influence which fights for the profession as a whole against the public: nor will it lead to those periodic scandals and crises which the Inner Ring produces. But it will do those things which that profession exists to do and will in the long run be responsible for all the respect which that profession in fact enjoys and which the speeches and advertisements cannot maintain. And if in your spare time you consort simply with the people you like, you will again find that you have come unawares to a real inside: that you are indeed snug and safe at the center of something which, seen from without, would look exactly like an Inner Ring. But the difference is that its secrecy is accidental, and its exclusiveness a by-product, and no one was led thither by the lure of the esoteric: for it is only four or five people who like one another meeting to do things that they like. This is friendship. Aristotle placed it among the virtues. It causes perhaps half of all the happiness in the world, and no Inner Ring can ever have it.”

“He went down trying not to look long at her, as though she were the sun, but he saw her, as one sees the sun, without looking.”

“It is usual that little streams put their mouths into big rivers. Most rivers can also be traced to the big sea. The fact that you start with a small choice does not mean you will be on that narrow road forever.”