We are reluctant to acknowledge the full scope of what we owe to luck, because our vanity rebels against the suggestion that our qualities cannot by themselves have produced our good fortune. It is hard to endure the thought that someone else might equally well have done what we have done.

We are all loosely fastened to the world, and to the opinions of others. The man who has learned to detach himself from things and from persons, and who has ceased to care overmuch about his own continuity, is in the best position to think clearly.

Every act of conscious learning requires the willingness to suffer an injury to one's self-esteem. That is why young children, before they are aware of their own self-importance, learn so easily.

The true paradox of consciousness is that we become most fully conscious precisely at those moments when we forget ourselves—when we are absorbed in something other than our own ego.