“To be free is to learn, to test yourself constantly, to gamble. It is not safe. I had learnt to use my fears as stepping stones rather than stumbling blocks, and”

“There will always be rocks in the road ahead of us. They will be stumbling blocks or stepping stones; it all depends on how you use them.”

“My poetry journey into the wilderness of language was a journey where each point of arrival turned out to be a stepping stone rather than a destination.”

“The only real stumbling block is fear of failure. In cooking you've got to have a what-the-hell attitude.”

“The block of granite which was an obstacle in the pathway of the weak becomes a stepping-stone in the pathway of the strong.”

“You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things!”

“Women have ever been the stumbling block and betrayers of ambition.”

“I myself had rather excel others in excellency of learning than in greatness of power.”

“In point of fact, Western philosophy has never set itself free of Christianity: wherever Christianity did not have a hand in the construction of modern philosophy it served instead as a stumbling block.”

“The fear of death comes from identifying yourself as the body. The earthly component, rather than the pure soul within.”