With no blame there's no shame. A human society can't exist without shame. Shame is like handedness or walking upright. It's a central human attribute. In fact, it's the first human quality ever recorded.''Where?''Genesis, Chapter Three. The covering of nakedness. The acquisition of shame was the first consequence of consciousness, of the speciating moment. Take shame from me and you are calling me pre-human.

I am who I am because the tears of my past have watered the magnificence of my present.

Times of terror and the deepest misery may arrive, but if there is to be any happiness in this misery it can only be a spiritual happiness, related to the past in the rescue of the culture of early ages and to the future in a serene and indefatigable championship of the spirit in a time which would otherwise completely swallow up the material.

That sense of happiness just out beyond my reach - I'm not sure I'd grasped that exactly, but I'd got something close to it, contentment maybe, or at least a functioning routine with regular rewards.

I want to be careful not to throw all this away. This is happiness. I think this is what happiness is. I haven't got it yet, but I can sense it out there. I feel I'm close to it. Some days, I'm so close I can almost smell it.

How to win in life:1 work hard 2 complain less 3 listen more 4 try, learn, grow5 don't let people tell you it cant be done6 make no excuses