All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous, unpremeditated act without benefit of experience.

I will grow. I will become something new and grand, but no grander than I now am. Just as the sky will be different in a few hours, its present perfection and completeness is not deficient, so am I presently perfect and not deficient because I will be different tomorrow. I will grow and I am not deficient.

Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.

The fatal metaphor of progress, which means leaving things behind us, has utterly obscured the real idea of growth, which means leaving things inside us.

There is no growth without discontent.

The harvest of old age is the recollection and abundance of blessing previously secured.

Progress has not followed a straight ascending line, but a spiral with rhythms of progress and retrogression, of evolution and dissolution.

The perfecting of one's self is the fundamental base of all progress and all moral development.

The unexamined life is not worth living.

Strength and growth come only through continuous effort and struggle...