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….

There's a whole category of people who miss out by not allowing themselves to be weird enough..

Newspapers are being read all around. The point is not, of course, to glean new information, but rather to coax the mind out of its sleep-induced int….

One of the unexpectedly important things that art can do for us is to teach us how to suffer more successfully..

We are sensitized by the books we read. And the more books we read, and the deeper their lessons sink into us, the more pairs of glasses we have. And….

Most anger stems from feelings of weakness, sadness and fear: hard to remember when one is at the receiving end of its defiant roar..

The happiness that may emerge from taking a second look is central to Proust's therapeutic conception. It reveals the extent to which our dissatisfac….

as the determinants of high status keep shifting, so, too, naturally, will the triggers of status anxiety be altered..

Rage is caused by a conviction, almost comic in its optimistic origins (however tragic in its effects), that a given frustration has not been written….

A 'good job' can be both practically attractive while still not good enough to devote your entire life to..

Dreams reveal we never quite get 'over' anything: it's all still in there somewhere..

We each appear to hold within ourselves a range of divergent views as to our native qualities.. And amid such uncertainty, we typically turn to the w….

In reality, the likelihood of reaching the pinnacle of capitalist society today is only marginally better than were the chances of being accepted int….

Philosophy had supplied Socrates with convictions in which he had been able to have rational, as opposed to hysterical, confidence when faced with di….

Reputation matters so much only because people so seldom think for themselves..

The inability to live in the present lies in the fear of leaving the sheltered position of anticipation or memory, and so of admitting that this is t….

It seems, in fact, that the more advanced a society is, the greater will be its interest in ruined things, for it will see in them a redemptively sob….

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 ….

We are all more intelligent than we are capable, and awareness of the insanity of love has never saved anyone from the disease..

It seems the only way to write a half decent book is to worry oneself sick on an hourly basis that one is producing a complete disaster..

Don't despair: despair suggests you are in total control and know what is coming. You don't - surrender to events with hope..