Most good thinking has its origin in fear.

People who readily accept the need for a gym will resist that their personalities might need some work too.

The happiness that may emerge from taking a second look is central to Proust's therapeutic conception. It reveals the extent to which our dissatisfactions may be the result of failing to look properly at our lives rather than the result of anything inherently deficient about them.

We tend to believe in the modern secular world that if you tell someone something once, they'll remember it. ... Religions go, "Nonsense. You need to keep repeating the lesson 10 times a day. So get on your knees and repeat it." That's what all religions tell us: "Get on your knees and repeat it 10 or 20 or 15 times a day." Otherwise our minds are like sieves.

Art holds out the promise of inner wholeness.

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

At the heart of every frustration lies a basic structure: the collision of a wish with an unyielding reality.