Religions are so subtle, so complicated, so intelligent in many ways that they're not fit to be abandoned to the religious alone; they're for all of ….

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….

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

Writing isn’t a career choice. It’s self-medication that over time precipitates the madness it was meant to ward off..

Being content is perhaps no less easy than playing the violin well: and requires no less practice..

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….

Taking architecture seriously therefore makes some singular and strenuous demands upon us...It means conceding that we are inconveniently vulnerable ….

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

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

A good half of the art of living is resilience..

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

Every realistic picture represents a choice as to which features of reality should be given prominence; no painting ever captures the whole..

We are certainly influenced by role models, and if we are surrounded by images of beautiful rich people, we will start to think that to be beautiful ….

We depend on our surroundings obliquely to embody the moods and ideas we respect and then to remind us of them. We look to our buildings to hold 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….

According to Montaigne, it was the oppressive notion that we had complete mental control over our bodies, and the horror of departing from this portr….

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 are continuously challenged to discover new works of culture—and, in the process, we don’t allow any one of them to assume a weight in our minds..

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

We might have been ready to offer sympathy, but in actuality there were stronger reasons to want to congratulate her for having found such a powerful….

Life gives us no such handy markers - a storm comes, and far from this being a harbinger of death and collapse, during its course a person discovers ….