“One rarely falls in love without being as much attracted to what is interestingly wrong with someone as what is objectively healthy.”

How generous was it to offer gifts to people one knew would never accept them?

We don’t really learn anything properly until there is a problem, until we are in pain, until something fails to go as we had hoped … We suffer, therefore we think.

Maturity: knowing where you’re crazy, trying to warn others of the fact and striving to keep yourself under control.

Our jobs make relentless calls on a narrow band of our faculties, reducing our chances of achieving rounded personalities and leaving us to suspect (often in the gathering darkness of a Sunday evening) that much of who we are, or could be, has gone unexplored.

Once I began to consider everything as being of potential interest, objects released latent layers of value.

Only as we mature does affection begin to depend on achievement.

True respectability stems not from the will of the majority but from proper reasoning.

Because the rhythm of conversation makes no allowance for dead periods, because the presence of others calls for continuous responses, we are left to regret the inanity of what we say, and the missed opportunity of what we do not.

Must being in love always mean being in pain?

Taking photographs can assuage the itch for possession sparked by the beauty of a place; our anxiety over losing a precious scene can decline with every click of the shutter.

Every adult life could be said to be defined by two great love stories: the story of our quest for sexual love and the story of our quest for love from the world.

It’s perhaps easier now than ever before to make a good living; it’s perhaps harder than ever before to stay calm, to be free of career anxiety.

Don’t despair: despair suggests you are in total control and know what is coming. You don’t – surrender to events with hope.

The attentions of others matter to us because we are afflicted by a congenital uncertainty as to our own value, as a result of which affliction we tend to allow others’ appraisals to play a determining role in how we see ourselves. Our sense of identity is held captive by the judgements of those we live among.

The difference between hope and despair is a different way of telling stories from the same facts.

What is a snob? A snob is anybody who takes a small part of you and uses that to come to a complete vision of who you are. That is snobbery.

The health of the people is really the foundation upon which all their happiness and all their powers as a state depend.

I guess anything in excess is no good for you, even things that are supposed to be healthy.

Protecting vital sources of renewal – unscathed marshes, healthy reefs, and deep-sea gardens – will provide hope for the future of the Gulf, and for all of us.

Sharks are beautiful animals, and if you’re lucky enough to see lots of them, that means that you’re in a healthy ocean.

Jealousy is a disease, love is a healthy condition. The immature mind often mistakes one for the other, or assumes that the greater the love, the greater the jealousy.

To bring a healthy child into this world, raise them right and watch them grow is the biggest miracle there is.

Kids will remind you that, even though you’ve gone down a road 100 times, it’s brand new for them – and that’s healthy.

I would ban sweets from school – but this pressure to bring in healthy food is too much.