top of page
.png){kind=small}
More
"In Britain, because I live here, I can also run into problems of envy and competition. But all this is just in a day's work for a writer. You can't put stuff out there without someone calling you a complete fool. Oh, well."
Work
"We may seek a fortune for no greater reason than to secure the respect and attention of people who would otherwise look straight through us."
People
"It is according to how we are able to answer the question of what we do (normally the first enquiry we will have to field in any new acquaintance) that the quality of our reception is likely to be decided."
Identity
"We don't need to be constantly reasonable in order to have good relationships; all we need to have mastered is the occasional capacity to acknowledge with good grace that we may, in one or two areas, be somewhat insane."
Relationship
"Loneliness makes us more capable of true intimacy if ever better opportunities do come along. We might be isolated for now, but we'll be capable of far closer, more interesting bonds with anyone we do eventually locate."
Relationship
"There is something improbably about the silence in the [subway] carriage, considering how naturally gregarious we are as a species. Still, how much kinder it is for the commuters to pretend to be absorbed in other things, rather than revealing the extent to which they are covertly evaluating, judging, condemning and desiring each other. A few venture a glance here and there, as furtively as birds pecking grain. But only if the train crashed would anyone know for sure who else had been in the carriage, what small parts of the nation's economy had been innocuously seated across the aisle just before the impact: employees of hotels, government ministries, plastic-surgery clinics, fruit nurseries and greetings-card companies."
Society
"Our minds are susceptible to the influence of external voices telling us what we require to be satisfied, voices that may drown out the faint sounds emitted by our souls and distract us from the careful, arduous task of accurately naming our priorities."
Mind
"Art was the very antithesis of crass moralism."
Art
"The essence of art is that its one case applies to thousands,' knew Schopenhauer."
Art
"There is a danger of developing a blanket distaste for modern life which could have its attractions but lack the all-important images to help us identify them."
Culture
More
"On account of its scale and complexity, the world will always outstrip the capacity of any single body to ask fertile questions of it."
Author Name
Personal Development
"I feel very strongly about putting questions; it partakes too much of the style of the day of judgement. You start a question, and it's like starting a stone. You sit quietly on the top of a hill; and away the stone goes, starting others; and presently some bland old bird (the last you would have thought of) is knocked on the head in his own back garden, and the family have to change their name. No, sir, I make it a rule of mine: the more it looks like Queer Street, the less I ask."
Author Name
Personal Development
"Ask questions. The secrets of life are hidden in questions, so ask wisely."
Author Name
Personal Development
"Use 'Why?' to help you follow the breadcrumbs back to the source of the problem."
Author Name
Personal Development
"In rational inquiry, we idealize to selected domains in such a way (we hope) as to permit us to discover crucial features of the world. Data and observations, in the sciences, have an instrumental character. They are of no particular interest in themselves, but only insofar as they constitute evidence that permits one to determine fundamental features of the real world, within a course of inquiry that is invariably undertaken under sharp idealizations, often implicit and simply common understanding, but always present."
Author Name
Personal Development
"Challenge everything for the Truth. Only those who challenge everything for the Truth are the blessed ones."
Author Name
Personal Development
"The most boring and unproductive question one can ask of any religion is whether or not it is true."
Author Name
Personal Development
"For it is owing to their wonder that men both now begin and at first began to philosophize."
Author Name
Personal Development
"The only debatable issue, it seems to me, is whether it is more ridiculous to turn to experts in social theory for general well-confirmed propositions, or to the specialists in the great religions and philosophical systems for insights into fundamental human values."
Author Name
Personal Development
"What does that quote mean to you? Can you explain the concept behind it and not just repeat the pretty phrase to me?"
Author Name
Personal Development
bottom of page