It's hard loving those who don't much like themselves: "If you're so great, why would you think I'm so great.

To one's enemies: "I hate myself more than you ever could.

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

The only people we can think of as normal are those we don't yet know very well.

I learnt to stop fantasising about the perfect job or the perfect relationship because that can actually be an excuse for not living.

We should read other people's books in order to learn what we feel; it is our own thoughts we should be developing, even if it is another writer's thought that help us to do so.

Let's say you went to Harvard or Oxford or Cambridge, and you said, 'I've come here because I'm in search of morality, guidance and consolation; I want to know how to live,' - they would show you the way to the insane asylum.