Most of us would like to end our lives feeling both that we had a good time and that we left the world a little better than we found it.

Despair ... is the only cure for illusion. Without despair we cannot transfer our allegiance to reality - it's a kind of mourning period for our fantasies. Some people do not survive this despair, but no major change within a person can occur without it.

Our economy is based on spending billions to persuade people that happiness is buying things, and then insisting that the only way to have a viable economy is to make things for people to buy so they’ll have jobs and get enough money to buy things.

Motors make noise and that tells you about the feelings and attitudes that went into it. Something was more important than sensory pleasure - nobody would invent a chair or dish that smelled bad or that made horrible noises - why were motors invented noisy? How could they possibly be considered complete or successful inventions with this glaring defect? Unless, of course, the aggressive, hostile, assaultive sound actually served to express some impulse of the owner.

People can bear anything.

A coincidence is a trend we have decided not to take seriously.

One of the main reasons wealth makes people unhappy is that it gives them too much control over what they experience. They try to translate their own fantasies into reality instead of tasting what reality itself has to offer.