“Good books put a finger on emotions that are deeply our own – but that we could never have described on our own.”

We each appear to hold within ourselves a range of divergent views as to our native qualities.. And amid such uncertainty, we typically turn to the wider world to settle the question of our significance.. we seem beholden to affections of others to endure ourselves.

A virtuous, ordinary life, striving for wisdom but never far from folly, is achievement enough.

It is striking how much more seriously we are likely to be taken after we have been dead a few centuries.

There is no such thing as work-life balance. Everything worth fighting for unbalances your life.

The best cure for one’s bad tendencies is to see them in action in another person.

Most good thinking has its origin in fear.

One kind of good book should leave you asking: how did the author know that about me?

Intimacy is the capacity to be rather weird with someone – and finding that that’s ok with them.

Literature deserves its prestige for one reason above all others – because it’s a tool to help us live and die with a little bit more wisdom, goodness, and sanity.

Work finally begins when the fear of doing nothing exceeds the fear of doing it badly.

We are not always humiliated by failing; we are humiliated only if we first invest our pride and sense of worth in a given achievement and then do not reach it.

For paranoia about ‘what other people think’ : remember that only some hate, a very few love – and almost all just don’t care.

The company of certain people may excite our generosity and sensitivity, while that of others awakens our competitiveness and envy.

As we write, so we build: to keep a record of what matters to us.

We read the weird tales in newspapers to crowd out the even weirder stuff inside us.

Which seems no less relevant in the secular realm than in the religious one-that we have within us a precious, childlike, vulnerable core which we should nourish and nurture on its turbulent journey through life.

Higher values propel and elevate us toward happiness, fulfillment, and meaning. Lower values demote us toward anxiety, depression, and suffering.

Anger and anxiety make you tired most.

When Christ becomes our central focus, contentment replaces our anxiety as well as our fears and insecurities.

The secret of perfect health lies in keeping the mind always cheerful – never worried, never hurried, never borne down by any fear, thought or anxiety.

I will be dead in a few months. But it hasn’t given me the slightest anxiety or worry. I always knew I was going to die.

Suffer no anxiety, for he who is a sufferer of anxiety becomes regardless of enjoyment of the world and the spirit, and contraction happens to his body and soul.

Anxiety clouds everything you know to be true.

What some call health, if purchased by perpetual anxiety about diet, isn’t much better than tedious disease.