“Average human nature is very coarse, and its ideals must necessarily be average. The world never loved perfect poise. What the world does love is commonly absence of poise, for it has to be amused.”

“Older people are most beautiful when they have what is lacking in the young: poise, erudition, wisdom, phronesis, and this post-heroic absence of agitation.”

“I kept looking at the flowers in a vase near me: lavender sweet peas, fragile winged and yet so still, so perfectly poised, apart, and complete. They are self-sufficient, a world in themselves, a whole — perfect. Is that then, perfection? Is what those sweet peas had what I have, occasionally in moments like that? But flowers always have it — poise, completion, fulfillment, perfection; I only occasionally, like that moment. For that moment I and the sweet peas had an understanding.”

“Since 1965 […. ] the richest fifth of the world's population increased its average income by 75 percent. For the poorest fifth of the world's population, the increase has been faster still, with average incomes more than doubling during the same period.”

“If Shakespeare had never existed, he asked, would the world have differed much from what it is today? Does the progress of civilization depend upon great men? Is the lot of the average human being better now that in the time of the Pharaohs?”

“As citizens of Cheon Il Guk, please have the wisdom to protect and love nature. Return to nature and enjoy a life of liberation and complete freedom. To love nature is to love God and humanity. When human life resonates with nature, human character can blossom in perfection. The flowers of a true culture of heart, a true artistic world, will bloom. It will be the Garden of Eden, the original ideal where human beings and all creation live in complete harmony and express their original nature.”

“Stand upon the Self, only then can we truly love the world. Take a very high stand; knowing our universal nature, we must look with perfect calmness upon all the panorama of the world.”

“Every human being must be viewed according to what it is good for. For not one of us, no, not one, is perfect. And were we to love none who had imperfection, this world would be a desert for our love.”

“Dialogue cannot exist, however, in the absence of a profound love for the world and its people.”

“Behind a remarkable scholar we not infrequently find an average human being, and behind an average artist we often find a very remarkable human being.”