Out of the millions of people we live among, most of whom we habitually ignore and are ignored by in turn, there are always a few that hold hostage our capacity for happiness, whom we could recognize by their smell alone and whom we would rather die than be without.

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.

Let death find us as we are building up our matchstick protests against its waves.

It seems, in fact, that the more advanced a society is, the greater will be its interest in ruined things, for it will see in them a redemptively sobering reminder of the fragility of its own achievements. Ruins pose a direct challenge to our concern with power and rank, with bustle and fame. They puncture the inflated folly of our exhaustive and frenetic pursuit of wealth.

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

The mind does most of its best thinking when we aren't there. The answers are there in the morning.

The most unbearable thing about many successful people is not - as we flatteringly think - how lazy they are, but how hard they work.