Idealistic notions that guide a younger person frequently prove unsustainable. Concluding any stage of life demands that a person rebuilds oneself after living destroys our ideological beliefs.

This world made by humans for themselves is most unfriendly towards humans. What irony.

Be the flame, not the moth.

I suddenly realized. The zebra. It is not something outside of us. The zebra is something inside of us. Our fears. Our own self-destructive nature. The zebra is the worst part of us when we are face-to-face with our worst times. The demon is us!

Luckily, even as a young man not yet become himself, John Bridgens had two things besides indecision that kept him from self-destruction - books and a sense of irony.

I will no longer mutilate and destroy myself in order to find a secret behind the ruins.

Why, since we are always complaining of our ills, are we constantly employed in redoubling them?

Troubles hurt the most when they prove self-inflicted.

A hair shirt does not always render those chaste who wear it.

He invites future injuries who rewards past ones.

Our greatest foes, and whom we must chiefly combat, are within.

I, who have never willfully pained another, have no business to pain myself.

We often give our enemies the means for our own destruction.