Chinua Achebe Quotes

In a drama of the highest order there is little food for censure or hatred; it teaches rather self-knowledge and self-respect.

It's good for everyone to understand that they are to love their enemies, simply because your enemies show you things about yourself you need to change. So in actuality enemies are friends in reverse.

The individual is capable of both great compassion and great indifference. He has it within his means to nourish the former and outgrow the latter.

I know the books that I need to help me to be wiser than my years and be kinder and more compassionate and more patient than I really am.

Simply be the qualities you seek in others.

There are people we treat wrong and later, we're prepared to treat other people right.

What we can and should change is ourselves: our impatience, our egoism (including intellectual egoism), our sense of injury, our lack of love and forbearance. I regard every other attempt to change the world, even if it springs from the best intentions, as futile.

My concern is how we learn to be genuine human beings.

If I want to be a better person for whoever is in my life, I have to learn.

When you practice Buddhism, you have to always self-reflect, and you can't avoid your problems. That makes me understand human beings better. I feel that the more I do that in my own life, the more I can see how to play a character.

Difficulty creates the opportunity for self-reflection and compassion.

Saying 'I'm wrong' is meaningless unless it comes from our heart, not just our lips. That often requires a genuine and profound change within ourselves, because we need to realize it's simply human nature and that everyone makes mistakes.

It always surprises me when people say, 'I don't regret one thing about my life. I wouldn't change anything because it's all led me to where I am today.' I would want to change certain things that have caused others pain.

I don't think that one should beat himself or herself over the head if immediately you're not like Jesus Christ or, you know, Gandhi or whoever. But I think the idea is to... to look at those examples and try to... try to operate in a way that every day you live or every interaction you have pushes you further along to operating with that mindset.

What I desire most in my life is to become a better person. I genuinely want to be good.

I didn't know what life was about before 'Love Sonia.' I didn't care. Now I'm a different person.

I've learned a lot. Being more compassionate.

We are here to love, not to judge. I'd been blaming and raging. I certainly wasn't loving my daughter that afternoon as God loves me. God's love doesn't insist on perfection or even good common sense. Why then should I demand more of those I love? With this tiny change in perspective I began to see the need for correction wasn't in my daughter, but in me.

We all have weaknesses. But I have figured that others have put up with mine so tolerably that I would be much less than fair not to make a reasonable discount for theirs.

According to me, your life is going to be a gradual process of becoming kinder and more loving. Hurry up. Speed it along. Start right now.

We can be better, we can be wiser, we can be more kind. Yes we have to change. We have to grow up and stop acting like 10 years old. Yes there is much to do, much to see, much to go into.

You can’t be good to others if you’re not strict with yourself. The more shallow you are with yourself, the harsher you are with others. The more profound you are with yourself, the more generous you are with others

We have to try to cure our faults by attention and not by will.

The more that we self-analyze ourselves, the nicer we are to people and to ourselves, and the more we understand each other.

Nothing but the heart can change the heart.