The most unbearable thing about many successful people is not - as we flatteringly think - how lazy they are, but how hard they work.

We wanted to test each other's capacity for survival: only if we had tried in vain to destroy one another would we know we were safe.

Our minds are susceptible to the influence of external voices telling us what we require to be satisfied, voices that may drown out the faint sounds emitted by our souls and distract us from the careful, arduous task of accurately naming our priorities.

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 finest proof of our loyalty toward one another was our monstrous disloyalties towards everyone else.

Only as we mature does affection begin to depend on achievement.

The more dignity is widely and freely available in a society, the less people want to be famous.