Life seems to be a process of replacing one anxiety with another and substituting one desire for another--which is not to say that we should never strive to overcome any of our anxieties or fulfil any of our desires, but rather to suggest that we should perhaps build into our strivings an awareness of the way our goals promise us a respite and a resolution that they cannot, by definition, deliver.

The only way to be happy is to realise how much depends on how you look at things

Blind impatience is equally evident in the fruit section. Our ancestors might have delighted in the occasional handful of berries found on the underside of a bush in late summer, viewing it as a sign of the unexpected munificence of a divine creator, but we became modern when we gave up on awaiting sporadic gifts from above and sought to render any pleasing sensation immediately and repeatedly available.

For paranoia about 'what other people think' : remember that only some hate, a very few love - and almost all just don't care.

Journeys are the midwives of thought. Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than moving planes, ships or trains.

The dream of the news is that it makes us care about other people and situations. But we cannot identify with people to whom we haven't been introduced. Humans will only respond to art, to people who are skilled in making you care.

According to Montaigne, it was the oppressive notion that we had complete mental control over our bodies, and the horror of departing from this portrait of normality, that had left the man unable to perform sexually.