Disappointment is a sort of bankruptcy - the bankruptcy of a soul that expends too much in hope and expectation.

There is a powerful craving in most of us to see ourselves as instruments in the hands of others and thus free ourselves from the responsibility for acts which are prompted by our own questionable inclinations and impulses.

It is the individual only who is timeless. Societies, cultures, and civilizations -- past and present -- are often incomprehensible to outsiders, but the individual's hungers, anxieties, dreams, and preoccupations have remained unchanged through the millenia.

When we believe ourselves in possession of the only truth, we are likely to be indifferent to common everyday truths.

A preoccupation with the future not only prevents us from seeing the present as it is but often prompts us to rearrange the past.

Dissipation is a form of self-sacrifice.

What Pascal said of an effective religion is true of any effective doctrine: it must be "contrary to nature, to common sense and to pleasure.