We keep a special place in our hearts for people who refuse to be impressed by us.

Wealth is not an absolute. It is relative to desire. Every time we yearn for something we cannot afford, we grow poorer, whatever our resources. And every time we feel satisfied with what we have, we can be counted as rich, however little we may actually possess.

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

One of love's greatest drawbacks is that, for a while at least, it is in danger of making us happy.

You have to be quite heavily invested in someone to do them the honour of telling them you're annoyed with them.

If it is true that love is the pursuit in another of qualities we lack in ourselves, then in our love of someone from another culture, one ambition may be to weld ourselves more closely to values missing from our own culture.

We feel something, and reach out for the nearest phrase or hum with which to communicate, but which fails to do justice to what has induced us to do so....We stay on the outside of our impressions, as if staring at them through a frosted window, superficially related to them, yet estranged from whatever has eluded casual definition.