It is logical to say that ignorance seems to be the root cause of all human suffering.

Hatred is prevalent on this earth because it requires no real effort, unlike the investment it takes to genuinely understand a person.

Not ordinarily do men achieve this balance of opposites. The idealists are not usually realistic, and the realists are not usually idealistic. The militant are not generally known to be passive, nor the passive to be militant. Seldom are the humble self-assertive, or the self assertive humble. ...Truth is found neither in the thesis nor the antithesis, but in an emergent synthesis that reconciles the two.

How well do we actually know ourselves? Can we dare to say that we really know someone, like really, really know them?

Of all the people I have ever known you are the only one I don't know.

Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.

Sometimes it’s only in the ecstasy of unrepressed movement that we may enter the stillness of our authentic selves. In such sacred moments, the world seems to be in step. This is why the idea of finding love across the dance floor endure — symbolizing that, when we know the true rhythm of our heart, we know the other.

To know a very different person from ourselves is a great luck for us!

Other people cannot see what I see whenever I look into your father's face, for behind your father's face as it is today are all those other faces which were his.

In daily life we never understand each other, neither complete clairvoyance nor complete confessional exists. We know each other approximately, by external signs, and these serve well enough as a basis for society and even for intimacy. But people in a novel can be understood completely by the reader, if the novelist wishes; their inner as well as their outer life can be exposed. And this is why they often seem more definite than characters in history, or even our own friends; we have been told all about them that can be told; even if they are imperfect or unreal they do not contain any secrets, whereas our friends do and must, mutual secrecy being one of the conditions of life upon this globe.