The secular world is full of holes. We have secularized badly.

Dreams reveal we never quite get 'over' anything: it's all still in there somewhere.

Our sense of what is valuable will hence be radically distorted if we must perpetually condemn as tedious everything we lack, simply because we lack it.

A simple problem of arithmetic: there are far more ambitions than there are grand destinies available.

Maturity: knowing where you're crazy, trying to warn others of the fact and striving to keep yourself under control.

When Proust urges us to evaluate the world properly, he repeatedly reminds us of the value of modest scenes.

Rather than getting more spoilt with age, as difficulties pile up, epiphanies of gratitude abound.