To be old is a glorious thing when one has not unlearned what it means to begin, this old man had perhaps first learned it thoroughly in old age. - Martin Buber

When you spread forth your hands, I hide my eyes from you;
even though you make many prayers, I no longer listen; your hands are full of blood.
Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes;
cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; defend the fatherless, plead for the widow.
Is that too little?

Avoid melancholy with all your might. It hurts the service of God more than sin. Satan takes less pleasure in sin than in a man's melancholy over having sinned again and so feeling that he is a slave to sin. Thus the Evil One has caught the poor soul in the net of despair.

the fact that every people feel itself threatened by the others gives the state it's definite unifying powers; it depends upon the instinct of self-preservation of society itself; the latent external crisis enables it to get the upper hand in internal crises