To look at the paper is to raise a seashell to one's ear and to be overwhelmed by the roar of humanity.

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

A notorious inability to express emotions makes human beings the only animals capable of suicide.

Everyone wants a better life: very few of us want to be better people.

William James once made an acute point about the relationship between happiness and expectation. He argued that satisfaction with ourselves does not require us to succeed in every endeavour. We are not always humiliated by failing; we are humiliated only if we first invest our pride and sense of worth in a given achievement and then do not reach it.

People only get really interesting when they start to rattle the bars of their cages.

We fall in love because we long to escape from ourselves with someone as beautiful, intelligent, and witty as we are ugly, stupid, and dull. But what if such a perfect being should one day turn around and decide they will love us back? We can only be somewhat shocked-how can they be as wonderful as we had hoped when they have the bad taste to approve of someone like us?