One kind of good book should leave you asking: how did the author know that about me?

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

There is real danger of a disconnect between what's on your business card and who you are deep inside, and it's not a disconnect that the world is ready to be patient with.

A dominant impulse on encountering beauty is to wish to hold on to it, to possess it and give it weight in one’s life. There is an urge to say, ‘I was here, I saw this and it mattered to me.

We are certainly influenced by role models, and if we are surrounded by images of beautiful rich people, we will start to think that to be beautiful and rich is very important - just as in the Middle Ages, people were surrounded by images of religious piety.

Everyone returns us to a different sense of ourselves, for we become a little of who they think we are.

The genius of religions is that they structure the inner life.