It takes a strong self — that is, a strong sense of personal identity — to relate fully to nature without being swallowed up. - Rollo May

They showed considerable anxiety because they were in the process of loving beauty.

Vanity and narcissism — the compulsive need to be admired and praised — undermine one's courage, for one then fights on someone else's conviction rather than one's own.

But in our age of emptiness, tragedies are relatively rare. Or if they are written, the tragic aspect is the very fact that human life is so empty, as in Eugene O’Neill’s drama, The Iceman Cometh. This play is set in a saloon, and its dramatis personae — alcoholics, prostitutes, and, as the chief character, a man who in the course of the play goes psychotic — can dimly recall the periods in their lives when they did believe in something. It is this echo of human dignity in a great void of emptiness that gives this drama the power to elicit the emotions of pity and terror of classical tragedy.