Work finally begins when the fear of doing nothing exceeds the fear of doing it badly..

It wasn't only fanatics and drunkards who began conversations with strangers in public..

An understandable hunger for potential clients tempts many [career counseling therapists] to overpromise, like creative writing teachers who, out of ….

The activities of drawing, eating and drinking, all involve assimilations by the self of desirable elements from the world, a transfer of goodness fr….

If we are inclined to forget how much there is in the world besides that which we anticipate, then works of art are perhaps a little to blame, for in….

The pre-scientific age, whatever its deficiencies, had at least offered its members the peace of mind that follows from knowing all man-made achievem….

We may not agree with what religions are trying to teach us, but we can admire the institutional way in which they're doing it..

Curiosity might be pictured as being made up of chains of small questions extending outwards, sometimes over huge distances, from a central hub compo….

If one felt successful, there'd be so little incentive to be successful..

The true nature of bureaucracy may be nowhere more obvious to the observer than in a developing country, for only there will it still be made manifes….

Symons remarked that the most common and unhelpful illusion plaguing those who came to see him was the idea that they ought somehow, in the normal co….

I thought about societies where exceptional fortunes are built up in industries with very little connection to out sincere and significant needs, ind….

It is the most ambitious and driven among us who are the most sorely in need of having our reckless hopes dampened through immersive dousings in the ….

The lesson? To respond to the unexpected and hurtful behavior of others with something more than a wipe of the glasses, to see it as a chance to expa….

We don't exist unless there is someone who can see us existing, what we say has no meaning until someone can understand, while to be surrounded by fr….

In the gap between who we wish one day to be and who we are at present, must come pain, anxiety, envy and humiliation..

People who readily accept the need for a gym will resist that their personalities might need some work too..

The arrogance that says analysing the relationship between reasons and causes is more important than writing a philosophy of shyness or sadness or fr….

Why, then, if expensive things cannot bring us remarkable joy, are we so powerfully drawn to them?.

Without sex, we would be dangerously invulnerable. We might believe we were not ridiculous. We wouldn't know rejection and humiliation so intimately..

A lump rises in our throat at the sight of beauty from an implicit knowledge that the happiness it hints at is the exception..