Individual psychotherapy - that is engaging a distressed fellow human in a disciplined conversation and human relationship - requires that the therapist have the proper temperament and philosophy of life for such work. By that I mean that the therapist must be patient modest and a perceptive listener rather than a talker and advice-giver.

The real issue is not talent as an independent element but talent in relationship to will desire and persistence. Talent without these things vanishes and even modest talent with those characteristics grows.

Conceit spoils the finest genius. There is not much danger that real talent or goodness will be overlooked long even if it is the consciousness of possessing and using it well should satisfy one and the great charm of all power is modesty.

The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.

The musician is perhaps the most modest of animals but he is also the proudest. It is he who invented the sublime art of ruining poetry.

All I wanted to do was write - at the time poems and prose too. I guess my ambition was simply to make money however I could to keep myself going in some modest way and I didn't need much I was unmarried at the time no children.

This is the hardest of all: to close the open hand out of love and keep modest as a giver.

Learning gives us a fuller conviction of the imperfections of our nature which one would think might dispose us to modesty.

Although modesty is natural to man it is not natural to children. Modesty only begins with the knowledge of evil.

I have often said that I wish I had invented blue jeans: the most spectacular the most practical the most relaxed and nonchalant. They have expression modesty sex appeal simplicity - all I hope for in my clothes.