Modern liberalism, for most liberals is not a consciously understood set of rational beliefs, but a bundle of unexamined prejudices and conjoined sentiments. The basic ideas and beliefs seem more satisfactory when they are not made fully explicit, when they merely lurk rather obscurely in the background, coloring the rhetoric and adding a certain emotive glow.

We would rather speak ill of ourselves than not talk about ourselves at all.

Whoever you are, you are human. Wherever you are, you live in the world, which is just waiting for you to notice the holiness in it.

Certainly one of the most enthralling things about human life is the recognition that we live in what, for practical purposes, is a universe without bounds.

If there is meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete.

He became absorbed beyond mere happiness as he felt himself exercising control over living things. He talked to them, urging them, ordering them. Driven back by the tide, his footprints became bays in which they were trapped and gave him the illusion of mastery.