Most good thinking has its origin in fear..

We keep a special place in our hearts for people who refuse to be impressed by us..

Our sadness won’t be of the searing kind but more like a blend of joy and melancholy: joy at the perfection we see before us, melancholy at an awaren….

Politics is so difficult, it's generally only people who aren't quite up to the task who feel convinced they are..

Every adult life could be said to be defined by two great love stories: the story of our quest for sexual love and the story of our quest for love fr….

Blind impatience is equally evident in the fruit section. Our ancestors might have delighted in the occasional handful of berries found on the unders….

The price we have paid for expecting to be so much more than our ancestors is a perpetual anxiety that we are far from being all we might be..

What kills us isn't one big thing, but thousands of tiny obligations we can't turn down for fear of disappointing others..

Rather than getting more spoilt with age, as difficulties pile up, epiphanies of gratitude abound..

Envy: a confused, tangled guide to one's own ambitions..

Rather than teasing the buyers, we may blame the society in which they lived for setting up a situation where the purchase of ornate cabinets felt ps….

We may seek a fortune for no greater reason than to secure the respect and attention of people who would otherwise look straight through us..

It is this idea 'decency' should be attached to wealth -and 'indecency'' to poverty - that forms the core of one strand of skeptical complaint agains….

Mental health: having enough safe places in your mind for your thoughts to settle..

Our disrespect for thinking: someone sitting in a chair, gazing out of a window blankly, always described as 'doing nothing'..

Many moments in religion seem attractive to me even though I can't believe in any of it..

Let death find us as we are building up our matchstick protests against its waves..

By travelling across frontiers, on horseback and in the imagination, Montaigne invited us to to exchange local prejudices and the self division they ….

Differ though we might with Christianity's view of what precisely our souls need, it is hard to discredit the provocative underlying thesis, which se….

One of our major flaws, and causes of unhappiness, is that we find it hard to take note of appreciate and be grateful for what is always around us. W….

No one is able to produce a great work of art without experience, nor achieve a worldly position immediately, nor be a great lover at the first attem….