Beware of your definition of success: If it has more to do with what other people think of you than it does with what you know of your own abilities, you may be confusing applause with achievement.

Darkness deserves gratitude. It is the alleluia point at which we learn to understand that all growth does not take place in the sunlight.

Beware the religion that turns you against another one. It's unlikely that it's really religion at all.

Hope is not a matter of waiting for things outside of us to get better. It is about getting better inside about what is going on outside.

We talk religion in a world that worships the bread but does not distribute it, that practices ritual rather than righteousness, that confesses but does not repent.

Grief is a sign that we loved something more than ourselves. . . . Grief makes us worthy to suffer with the rest of the world.

Compassion makes no distinction between friends and enemies, neighbors and outsiders, compatriots and foreigners. Compassion is the gate to human community.

When souls really touch, it is forever. Then space and time disappear, and all that remains is the consciousness that we are not alone in life.

Compassion is not sympathy. Compassion is mercy. It is a commitment to take responsibility for the suffering of others.

Oppressors do not get to be oppressors in a single sweep. They manage it because little by little, we make them that. We overlook too much in the beginning and wonder why we lost control in the end.

Compassion is the ability to understand how difficult it is for people to be the best of what they want to be at all times.

They all think medicine should be magic, and they become mad at me when it's not.

AutumnThe season between summer and winter, comprising in the Northern Hemisphereusually the months of September, October and November.A period of maturity.

One can build the Empire State Building, discipline the Prussian army, make a state hierarchy mightier than God, yet fail to overcome the unaccountable superiority of certain human beings.

Now there's a grown-up swinging town.

The goal of social media is to turn customers into a volunteer marketing army

There's a road to hell that is paved with good intentions but it's a long route. The quicker path is paved with the kind of ignorance that clever men who just don't want to know are best at.

Every hour wounds. The last one kills.

I know there is a moral to this story, but I don't know what it is.

I'd rather sink trying to be different, than stay afloat like everyone else.

Love yourself; and in that love not unconsidered leave your honor.