Find more pleasure in intelligent dissent than in passive agreement, for, if you value intelligence as you should, the former implies a deeper agreement than the latter.

Dad had a way of disarming people because he never really directly attacked them. He might attack a principle, but he never attacked the individual.

In idleness there is a perpetual despair.

At last I understood that the way over, or through this dilemma, the unease at writing about 'petty personal problems' was to recognize that nothing is personal, in the sense that it is uniquely one's own. Writing about oneself, one is writing about others, since your problems, pains, pleasures, emotions—and your extraordinary and remarkable ideas—can't be yours alone. [...] Growing up is after all only the understanding that one's unique and incredible experience is what everyone shares.

Integrity is not a conditional word. It doesn't blow in the wind or change with the weather.

Anything you rely on can become a crutch. And disabled or not, when you rely on something, that is what will cripple you.