“We must learn two things. One is to see ourselves as others see us. We apply one yardstick when we wish to appraise other people. Secondly, we cannot succeed in anything if we act in fear of other people's opinions.”

“When we really see the others, not only ourselves, we start to see ourselves in others”

“There are only two centres, God and ourselves; and we must rest on one or the other. We cannot rest on both.”

“We play at believing ourselves imortal. We delude oursleves in the appraisal of our own works and in our perpetual misappraisal of the works of others. See you at the Nobel, writers say, as one might say: see you in hell.”

“The thoughts we choose to act upon define us to others, the ones we do not define us to ourselves.”

“Learning to be wise has a deeper purpose than just learning to be smart. To become wise, we must learn to understand and master things we do not know. Learn from the mistakes we make ourselves. Learn from the mistakes other people make, and find out how other people achieved success.”

“… stupidity is one of the two things we see most clearly in retrospect. The other is missed chances.”

“We are too often influenced by other people's opinions. We worry too much about what others think of us. We feel called to satisfy other people's expectations, when we know that's definitely not the kind of life we want to live.”

“We cannot grow when we are in shame, and we can't use shame to change ourselves or others.”

“We live in an enlightened age, however, an age that has learned to see and to value other living things as they are, not as we wish them to be. And the long and creditable history of science has taught us, if nothing else, to look carefully before we judge—to judge, if we must, based on what we see, not what we would prefer to believe.”