When one has finished building one's house, one suddenly realizes that in the process one has learned something that one really needed to know in the worst way - before one began.
It is, indeed, a fact that, in the midst of society and sociability every evil inclination has to place itself under such great restraint, don so many masks, lay itself so often on the procrustean bed of virtue, that one could well speak of a martyrdom of the evil man. In solitude all this falls away. He who is evil is at his most evil in solitude: which is where he is at his best - and thus to the eye of him who sees everywhere only a spectacle also at his most beautiful.
We must learn to love, learn to be kind, and this from the earliest youth; if education or chance give us no opportunity to practice these feelings, our soul becomes dry and unsuited even to understanding the tender inventions of loving people.
I have found strength where one does not look for it: in simple, mild, and pleasant people, without the least desire to rule -- and, conversely, the desire to rule has often appeared to me a sign of inward weakness: they fear their own slave soul and shroud it in a royal cloak (in the end, they still become the slaves of their followers, their fame, etc.)
People who live in an age of corruption are witty and slanderous; they know that there are other kinds of murder than by dagger or assault; they also know that whatever is well said is believed.
Buddhism is a hundred times as realistic as Christianity it is part of its living heritage that it is able to face problems objectively and coolly; it is the product of long centuries of philosophical speculation.