“Travel agents would be wiser to ask us what we hope to change about our lives rather than simply where we wish to go.”

Most of what makes a book ‘good’ is that we are reading it at the right moment for us.

Our responses to the world are crucially moulded by the company we keep, for we temper our curiosity to fit in with the expectations of others.

We need a home in the psychological sense as much as we need one in the physical: to compensate for a vulnerability.

Arguments are like eels: however logical, they may slip from the minds weak grasp unless fixed there by imagery and style.

These inventors were elevating the formulation of entrepreneurial ideas to the status of a visionary activity. Though forced to justify their efforts in the pragmatic language of venture capital, they were at heart utopian thinkers intent on transforming the world.

In their different ways, art and philosophy help us, in Schopenhauer’s words, to turn pain into knowledge.

How do the stems connect to the roots?’ ‘Where is the mist coming from?’ ‘Why does one tree seem darker than another?’ These questions are implicitly asked and answered in the process of sketching.

As victims of hurt, we frequently don’t bring up what ails us, because so many wounds look absurd in the light of day.

There are selections so acute that they come to define a place, with the result that we can no longer travel through that landscape without being reminded of what a great artist noticed there.

Socrates, on being insulted in the marketplace, asked by a passerby, “Don’t you worry about being called names?” retorted, “Why? Do you think I should resent it if an ass had kicked me?

Although I don’t believe in God, Bach’s music shows me what a love of God must feel like.

When I see someone like Richard Dawkins, I see my father. I grew up with that. I’m basically the child of Richard Dawkins.

The challenge of modern relationships: how to prove more interesting than the other’s smartphone.

William James once made an acute point about the relationship between happiness and expectation. He argued that satisfaction with ourselves does not require us to succeed in every endeavour.

Mental health: having enough safe places in your mind for your thoughts to settle.

One’s doing well if age improves even slightly one’s capacity to hold on to that vital truism: “This too shall pass.

An astounding panoply of toxic substances, venomous creatures, poison plants, animals and insects, deleterious environments, virulent pathogens, infectious agents, noxious gases, and combustible chemicals were marshalled to defeat foes.

Since the 17th century, insurance agents have been the foremost experts on risk.

Anything that is truly an agent or the cause of any event; but they signify merely men’s ignorance of the real an immediate cause.

When I’m in power, here’s how I’m gonna put the country back on its feet. I’m going to put sterilizing agents in the following products: Sunny Delight, Mountain Dew, and Thick-Crust Pizza. Only the ‘tardiest of the ‘tards like the thick crust.

A man is truly free, even here in this embodied state, if he knows that God is the true agent and he by himself is powerless to do anything.

I don’t like the idea of agents in a typical form. The idea of agents, to me, brings up the idea of a man in a very boring suit who’s not very good looking and doesn’t have much attention to style.

War should never be entered upon until every agency of peace has failed.

Awareness is the greatest agent for change.