"Whenever you are examining someone else's belongings, you are bound to learn many interesting things about the person of which you were not previously aware."

"The one who straightens out himself will attain moksha [will be liberated]. If you don’t straighten out, people will beat you into doing so. The doorway to moksha [ultimate liberation] is narrow, so how will you be able to enter if you are obstinate?"

"Virtue is not the absence of vices or the avoidance of moral dangers; virtue is a vivid and separate thing, like pain or a particular smell. Mercy does not mean not being cruel or sparing people revenge or punishment; it means a plain and positive thing like the sun, which one has either seen or not see."

"Every fanatic or enemy of virtue is not at liberty to misrepresent the greatest geniuses and most heroic defenders of all that is valuable in this mortal world."

"All you really need to know for the moment is that the universe is a lot more complicated than you might think, even if you start from a position of thinking it's pretty damn complicated in the first place."

"Talking is like playing on the harp there is as much in laying the hand on the strings to stop their vibrations as in twanging them to bring out their music."

"Gretchen Lowell was beautiful in a very grown-up way, in a sophisticated, confident way. It was more than beauty; it was the power of beauty. She radiated it."