Sublime places repeat in grand terms a lesson that ordinary life typically teaches viciously: that the universe is mightier than we are, that we are frail and temporary and have no alternative but to accept limitations on our will; that we must bow to necessities greater than ourselves.

Maturity: the confidence to have no opinions on many things.

We should not feel embarrassed by our difficulties, only by our failure to grow anything beautiful from them.

What is a snob? A snob is anybody who takes a small part of you and uses that to come to a complete vision of who you are. That is snobbery.

what we call a home is merely any place that succeeds in making more consistenly available to us the important truths which the wider world ignores, or which our distracted and irresolute selves have trouble holding onto." (p123) Architecture of Happiness

Mental health: having enough safe places in your mind for your thoughts to settle.

Getting to the top has an unfortunate tendency to persuade people that the system is OK after all.