“Endeavoring to purchase something we think beautiful may in fact be the most unimaginative way of dealing with the longing it excites in us, just as trying to sleep with someone may be the bluntest response to a feeling of love.”

The materialistic view of happiness of our age starkly revealed in our understanding of the word “luxury.

What is fascinating about marriage is why anyone wants to get married.

Our greatest furies spring from events which violate our sense of the ground of our existence.

It was no longer her absence that wounded me, but my growing indifference to it. Forgetting, however calming, was also a reminder of infidelity to what I had at one time held so dear.

Our sadness won’t be of the searing kind but more like a blend of joy and melancholy: joy at the perfection we see before us, melancholy at an awareness of how seldom we are sufficiently blessed to encounter anything of its kind.

The fear of saying something stupid (which stupid people never have) has censored far more good ideas than bad ones.

Booksellers are the most valuable destination for the lonely, given the numbers of books that were written because authors couldn’t find anyone to talk to.

A successful work will draw out the features capable of exciting a sense of beauty and interest in the spectator.

The problem isn’t so much finding good ideas (there is no shortage) as embedding the ones we have into everyday practice.

We often lose our tempers not with those who are actually to blame; just with those who love us enough to forgive us our foul moods.

The inability to live in the present lies in the fear of leaving the sheltered position of anticipation or memory, and so of admitting that this is the only life that one is ever likely (heavenly intervention aside) to live.

In a secularising world, art has replaced religion as a touchstone of our reverence and devotion.

I passionately believe that’s it’s not just what you say that counts, it’s also how you say it – that the success of your argument critically depends on your manner of presenting it.

Only by declaring a book completely finished can one start to see how much remains to be done on it.

Literature is the greatest reality simulator – a machine that puts you through infinitely more situations than you can ever directly witness.

The greatest difficulty of Travel is that one is forced to take oneself along.

Personally I would like to see that the nuclear age, in terms of power, does come, because there’s no long-term future for developing countries without nuclear power.

Wisdom leads to unity, but ignorance to separation. So long as God seems to be outside and far away, there is ignorance. But when God is realised within, that is true knowledge.

So long as one does not become simple like a child, one does not get divine illumination.

Take the case of the infinite ocean. There is no limit to its water. Suppose a pot is immersed in it: there is water both inside and outside the pot.

Bhakti is the one essential thing. To be sure, God exists in all beings. Who, then is a devotee?

The way of love is as true as the way of knowledge. All paths ultimately lead to the same Truth. But as long as God keeps the feeling of ego in us, it is easier to follow the path of love.

Truth is simple, but Illusion makes it infinitely intricate. The person is rare who possesses an insatiable longing for Truth; the rest allow Illusion to bind them ever more and more.

You know, these month – or two-month-long endeavors that millions of dollars are based on.