Speak to me, Jacob, do not play the tyrant. Speak to me.

But what virtue I do have is in me and of me. Men deny the good that comes from themselves, calling it God. So do they with their won evil, calling it the Devil.

I wondered at him, so wise and so foolish, to have lived with me all these months and not know that the worst storms break inside a man.

I dig and plough at your command, ' I replied, 'but you will not tell me how to shit.

I mean that repeated offences, even when they secure forgiveness, drive out love. And from that I came to say that one may compel obedience but never love.

Whatever makes a man a beast also renders him pitiable. But it behoves us to be wary of these besti*l men despite our compassion, for they frequently turn on their friends.

How did men make themselves loved, I wondered. I had passed all my life with men who were loved but I seemed never to have learnt the lesson.

God cuts out our path, makes a groove in the clay with His finger, and we poor blind ants slide down into it.

The present is never tidy, or certain, or reasonable, and those who try to make it so once it becomes the past succeed only in making it seem implausible.

If only sorrow could bring hope, I'd learn to live again

There are countries of the world, and regions of one's own mind, where it is unwise to travel.

Pink is female - but why? Are girls any more pink than boys? Are boys any more blue than girls? It's something that has been sold to us, mostly so other things can be sold to us.

Perhaps nothing so accurately characterizes dysfunctional families as denial.

Men rise from one ambition to another: first, they seek to secure themselves against attack, and then they attack others.

The mark of great sportsmen is not how good they are at their best, but how good they are their worst.

The great Vaishnava religion of India has also sprung from a Tamil Pariah - Shathakopa - "who was a dealer in winnowing-fans but was a Yogin all the while".

I had the most magical childhood, running free and going anywhere I wanted to in my head.

It was like being in a Jane Austen novel, but one with far less clothing.