He is always on the brink of suicide... because he seeks salvation through the routine formulas suggested to him by the society in which he lives.

Searching outside oneself for what can only be found within can lead to a life lived in the wrong direction and sacrifices made for the wrong reasons. People can wind up alienated from themselves even if they achieve lofty goals set by others.

We are all so afraid, we are all so alone, we all so need from the outside the assurance of our own worthiness to exist.

How we need another soul to cling to.

The strength of one man is so unequal to his wants, and his mind so unfitted for perpetual solitude, that he is soon obliged to seek assistance and relief of another, who in his turn requires the same

What he’s looking for, what he wants, is all around him, but he doesn’t want that because it is all around him. Every step’s an effort, both physically and spiritually, because he imagines his goal to be external and distant.

Until we have inner permission to be who we are, we will always be searching for it in the outside world.

The moment we begin to seek love, love begins to seek us. And to save us.

Like a wallflower he stayed in the background waiting for someone to fetch him, someone more courageous and stronger than himself to tear him away and force him into happiness.

What we are looking for, I am afraid, is neither a true leader nor a true Messiah, but a false Messiah - a man who will give us over-simplified answers, who will justify our ways, who will castigate our enemies, who will vindicate our selfishness as a way of life and make us comfortable within our prejudices and preconceptions.

External life being so mighty, the instruments so huge and terrible, the performances so great, the thoughts so great and threatening, you produce a someone who can exist before it. You invent a man who can stand before the terrible appearances. This way he can't get justice and he can't give justice, but he can live. And this is what mere humanity always does. It's made up of these inventors or artists, millions and millions of them, each in his own way trying to recruit other people to play a supporting role and sustain him in his make-believe... That's the struggle of humanity, to recruit others to your version of what's real.

We seek God so earnestly, Eliav reflected, not to find Him but to discover ourselves.

The person who seeks all their applause from outside has their happiness in another's keeping.

The urge to escape from selfhood and the environment is in almost everyone almost all the time.