Anyone who isn't embarrassed of who they were last year probably isn't learning enough.

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 motive to feel sad. We should have envied her for having located someone without whom she so firmly felt she could not survive, beyond the gate let along in a bare student bedroom in a suburb of Rio. If she had been able to view her situation from a sufficient distance, she might have been able to recognise this as one of the high points in her life.

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

Most good thinking has its origin in fear.

What is a snob? A snob is anybody who takes a small part of you and uses that to come to a complete vision of who you are. That is snobbery.

The pleasure we derive from journeys is perhaps dependent more on the mindset with which we travel than on the destination we travel to.

One's doing well if age improves even slightly one's capacity to hold on to that vital truism: "This too shall pass.