The media insists on taking what someone didn't mean to say as being far closer to the truth than what they did.

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?

Most victories are, in the best way, acts of revenge.

Work finally begins when the fear of doing nothing exceeds the fear of doing it badly.

Bitterness: anger that forgot where it came from.

Envy: a confused, tangled guide to one's own ambitions.

Differ though we might with Christianity's view of what precisely our souls need, it is hard to discredit the provocative underlying thesis, which seems no less relevant in the secular realm than in the religious one-that we have within us a precious, childlike, vulnerable core which we should nourish and nurture on its turbulent journey through life.