True freedom doesn't lie in the maximization of choice, but, ironically, is most easily found in a life where there is little choice.

Socrates pointed out that we carry on as though death were the greatest of all calamities-yet, for all we know, it might be the greatest of all blessings. What are we going to call good? What are we going to call bad? Good or bad is never our choice, or even the issue.

You want to not have any problems.

What makes human life - which is inseparable from this moment--so precious is its fleeting nature. And not that it doesn't last but that it never returns again.

There's nothing to prove, nothing to figure out, nothing to get, nothing to understand. When we finally stop explaining everything to ourselves, we may discover that in silence, complete understanding is already there.

And here we are with our improved human world that we've spent a great deal of time and energy working on. We've improved the rivers and the lakes and the land and our society and our ways of living to the point where we now wonder if the human race will survive.

Whatever the world dishes up, we take it on--not on our own terms, but on the world's.