Booksellers are the most valuable destination for the lonely, given the numbers of books that were written because authors couldn't find anyone to talk to.

Pegging your contentment to the overall state of the world rather than of your own life: the basis of morality, or a sort of madness?

Status Anxiety: A worry, so pernicious as to be capable of ruining extended stretches of our lives, that we are in danger of failing to conform to the ideals of success laid down by our society and that we may as a result be stripped of dignity and respect; a worry that we are currently occupying too modest a rung or are about to fall to a lower one.

The only possible way to begin a book is to tell oneself that its eventual failure is guaranteed — but survivable.

Instead of bringing back 1600 plants, we might return from our journeys with a collection of small unfêted but life-enhancing thoughts.

It's clear to me that there is no good reason for many philosophy books to sound as complicated as they do.

The materialistic view of happiness of our age starkly revealed in our understanding of the word "luxury.