From “What Makes You Come Alive: A Spiritual Walk with Howard Thurman” by Lerita Coleman Brown
If a person knows what word he can use to address you so as to draw you off balance, he can always keep you at his mercy. The basis of inner togetherness, one’s sense of inner authority, must never be at the mercy of factors in one’s environment, however significant they may be. Nothing from outside a man can destroy him until he opens the door and lets it in…Whatever determines how you feel on the inside controls in large part the destiny of your life.
-Howard Thurman, Deep Is the Hunger