It is therefore of supreme importance that we consent to live not for ourselves but for others. When we do this we will be able first of all to face and accept our own limitations. As long as we secretly adore ourselves, our own deficiencies will remain to torture us with an apparent defilement. But if we live for others, we will gradually discover that no expects us to be 'as Gods'. We will see that we are human, like everyone else, that we all have weaknesses and deficiencies, and that these limitations of ours play a most important part in all our lives. It is because of them that we need others and others need us. We are not all weak in the same spots, and so we supplement and complete one another, each one making up in himself for the lack in another.

There are times when a feeling of expectancy comes to me, as if something is there, beneath the surface of my understanding, waiting for me to grasp it. It is the same tantalizing sensation when you almost remember a name, but don't quite reach it. I can feel it when I think of human beings, of the hints of evolution suggested by the removal of wisdom teeth, the narrowing of the jaw no longer needed to chew such roughage as it was accustomed to; the gradual disappearance of hair from the human body; the adjustment of the human eye to the fine print, the swift, colored motion of the twentieth century. The feeling comes, vague and nebulous, when I consider the prolonged adolesence of our species; the rites of birth, marriage and death; all the primitive, barbaric ceremonies streamlined to modern times. Almost, I think, the unreasoning, bestial purity was best. Oh, something is there, waiting for me. Perhaps someday the revelation will burst in upon me and I will see the other side of this monumental grotesque joke. And then I'll laugh. And then I'll know what life is.

As we go through life we gradually discover who we are, but the more we discover, the more we lose ourselves.

Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day.

That was the only time, as I stood there, looking at that strange rubbish, feeling the wind coming across those empty fields, that I started to imagine just a little fantasy thing, because this was Norfolk after all, and it was only a couple of weeks since I'd lost him. I was thinking about the rubbish, the flapping plastic in the branches, the shore-line of odd stuff caught along the fencing, and I half-closed my eyes and imagined this was the spot where everything I'd ever lost since my childhood had washed up, and I was now standing here in front of it, and if I waited long enough, a tiny figure would appear on the horizon across the field, and gradually get larger until I'd see it was Tommy, and he'd wave, maybe even call. The fantasy never got beyond that --I didn't let it-- and though the tears rolled down my face, I wasn't sobbing or out of control. I just waited a bit, then turned back to the car, to drive off to wherever it was I was supposed to be.

I half closed my eyes and imagined this was the spot where everything I'd ever lost since my childhood had washed up, and I was now standing here in front of it, and if I waited long enough, a tiny figure would appear on the horizon across the field and gradually get larger until I'd see it was Tommy, and he'd wave, and maybe even call.

Gradually I came to realize that people will more readily swallow lies than truth as if the taste of lies was homey appetizing: a habit.

The first year I started in San Francisco there was an American work on every program and there's been a lot of music by living composers and gradually that was part of the process of getting the audience really to trust me.

Institutions develop because people put a lot of trust in them they meet real needs they represent important aspirations whether it's monasteries media or banks people begin by trusting these institutions and gradually the suspicion develops that actually they're working for themselves not for the community.

Life is a series of steps. Things are done gradually. Once in a while there is a giant step but most of the time we are taking small seemingly insignificant steps on the stairway of life.

Success comes to a writer as a rule so gradually that it is always something of a shock to him to look back and realize the heights to which he has climbed.

Against my will in the course of my travels the belief that everything worth knowing was known at Cambridge gradually wore off. In this respect my travels were very useful to me.

I think that Americans should gradually begin to adopt positive behavior rather than doing evil. They should not expect an immediate reaction in return for their positive measures. It will take time.

So there was a fire inside me. And that fire inside you it can be turned into a negative form or a positive form. And I gradually realised that I had this fire and that it had to be used in a positive way.

Peace is a daily a weekly a monthly process gradually changing opinions slowly eroding old barriers quietly building new structures.

When families save they can get through emergencies like a bad harvest or a medical emergency. But it's more than that. They can also plan for the future gradually saving up for a small business or for their children's school tuition.

It was also my idea that the advisory committees of the Academy should replace the legal committees of the German Reichstag which was gradually fading into the background in the Reich.

So in my freshman year at the University of Alabama learning the literature on evolution what was known about it biologically just gradually transformed me by taking me out of literalism and increasingly into a more secular scientific view of the world.

The thing about being autistic is that you gradually get less and less autistic because you keep learning you keep learning how to behave. It's like being in a play I'm always in a play.

Even a purely moral act that has no hope of any immediate and visible political effect can gradually and indirectly over time gain in political significance.

The subject of history is the gradual realization of all that is practically necessary.

The whole history of science has been the gradual realization that events do not happen in an arbitrary manner but that they reflect a certain underlying order which may or may not be divinely inspired.

The idea of winning a doctor's degree gradually assumed the aspect of a great moral struggle and the moral fight possessed immense attraction for me.

My first experiences of academic friendship made me smile in after years when I looked back on them. But my circle of acquaintances had gradually grown so large that it was only natural new friendships should grow out of it.