"Where is instruction in relationships, in the management of career, in the raising of children, in the pursuit of friendship, in the wise approach to anxiety and death? All this sort of stuff I craved to learn about when I was a student and down to this day."

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

"[L]ife is a phenomenon in need of criticism, for we are, as fallen creatures, in permanent danger of worshipping false gods, of failing to understand ourselves and misinterpreting the behaviour of others, of growing unproductively anxious or desirous, and of losing ourselves to vanity and error. Surreptitiously and beguilingly, then, with humour or gravity, works of art--novels, poems, plays, paintings or films--can function as vehicles to explain our condition to us. They may act as guides to a truer, more judicious, more intelligent understanding of the world."

"Importance of the random: keep brushing up against people, books, experiences we don't yet know what to do with."

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

"I like the values associated with a medical family - common sense, being practical but also thoughtful."

"The claims I'm making for art are simply the claims that we naturally make around music or around poetry. We're much more relaxed around those art forms. We're willing to ask, 'How could this find a place in my heart?'"

"We continue to need exhortations to be sympathetic and just, even if we do not believe that there is a God who has a hand in wishing to make us so. We no longer have to be brought into line by the threat of hell or the promise of paradise; we merely have to be reminded that it is we ourselves -- that is, the most mature and reasonable parts of us (seldom present in the midst of our crises and obsessions) -- who want to lead the sort of life which we once imagined supernatural beings demanded of us. An adequate evolution of morality from superstition to reason should mean recognizing ourselves as the authors of our own moral commandments."

"Though it may feel otherwise, enjoying life is no more dangerous than apprehending it with continuous anxiety and gloom."

"Rather than getting more spoilt with age, as difficulties pile up, epiphanies of gratitude abound."

"What kills us isn't one big thing, but thousands of tiny obligations we can't turn down for fear of disappointing others."

"We are humiliated by what is powerful and mean, but awed by what is powerful and noble."

"Distress at losing an object can be as much a frustration at the intellectual mystery of the disappearance as about the loss itself."

"Philosophy, art, politics, religion and bohemia have never sought to do away entirely with the status hierarchy; they have attemptee, rather, to institute new kinds of hierarchies based on sets of values unrecognised by, and critical of, those of the majority.. They have provided us with persuasive and consoling reminders that there is more than one way of succeeding in life."

"If one felt successful, there'd be so little incentive to be successful."

"Humboldt's early biographer, F.A. Schwarzenberg, subtitled his life of Humboldt What May Be Accomplished in a Lifetime. He summarised the areas of his subject's extraordinary curiosity as follows: '1) The knowledge of the Earth and its inhabitants. 2) The discovery of the higher laws of nature, which govern the universe, men, animals, plants, minerals. 3) The discovery of new forms of life. 4) The discovery of territories hitherto but imperfectly known, and their various productions. 5)The acquaintance with new species of the human race--- their manners, their language and the historical traces of their culture.' What may be accomplished in a lifetime---and seldom or never is."

"On account of its scale and complexity, the world will always outstrip the capacity of any single body to ask fertile questions of it."

"A good half of the art of living is resilience."

"The most courageous act in politics is to try to understand your opponent."

"You normally have to be bashed about a bit by life to see the point of daffodils, sunsets and uneventful nice days."

"It is one of the unexpected disasters of the modern age that our new unparalleled access to information has come at the price of our capacity to concentrate on anything much. The deep, immersive thinking which produced many of civilization's most important achievements has come under unprecedented assault. We are almost never far from a machine that guarantees us a mesmerizing and libidinous escape from reality. The feelings and thoughts which we have omitted to experience while looking at our screens are left to find their revenge in involuntary twitches and our ever-decreasing ability to fall asleep when we should."

"Being political doesn't only or principally mean caring what party wins the next election, to be political is to care about the happiness of strangers."

"Forgiveness requires a sense that bad behaviour is a sign of suffering rather than malice."

"I was uncomfortable writing fiction. My love was the personal essay, rather than the novel."

"It is perhaps when our lives are at their most problematic that we are likely to be most receptive to beautiful things."

"It is difficult when reading the description of certain fictional characters not at the same time to imagine the real-life acquaintances who they most closely, if often unexpectedly, resemble."

"We seem to be unable to resist overstating every aspect of ourselves: how long we are on the planet for, how much it matters what we achieve, how rare and unfair are our professional failures, how rife with misunderstandings are our relationships, how deep are our sorrows. Melodrama is individually always the order of the day."

"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."

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

"I never wavered in my certainty that God did not exist. I was simply liberated by the thought that there might be a way to engage with religion without having to subscribe to its supernatural content - a way, to put it in more abstract terms, to think about Fathers without upsetting my respectful memory of my own father. I recognized that my continuing resistance to theories of an afterlife or of heavenly residents was no justification for giving up on the music, buildings, prayers, rituals, feasts, shrines, pilgrimages, communal meals and illustrated manuscripts of the faiths."

"Anyone who isn't embarrassed of who they were last year probably isn't learning enough."

"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."

"He feared that by leaving her he would ruin her life - so he stayed, and did just that."

"When we suspect that we are appropriate targets for hurt, it does not take much for us to believe that someone or something is out to hurt us."

"We study biology, physics, movements of glaciers... Where are the classes on envy, feeling wronged, despair, bitterness..."

"It is as if we need to be reminded of convention in order properly to appreciate the wonder of being unguarded..."

"The solution as consumers is - perhaps surprisingly - to take adverts very, very seriously. We should ask ourselves what it is that we find lovely in them - the visions of friendship, togetherness, repose, or whatever. And then consider what would actually help us find these qualities in our lives."

"Marriage: a hopeful, generous, infinitely kind gamble taken by two people who don't know yet who they are or who the other might be, binding themselves to a future they cannot conceive of and have carefully omitted to investigate."

"I'm also interested in the modern suggestion that you can have a combination of love and sex in a marriage - which no previous society has ever believed."

"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."

"The price we have paid for expecting to be so much more than our ancestors is a perpetual anxiety that we are far from being all we might be."

"We would not reliably assent to reproduce unless we first had lost our minds."

"He was marked out by his relentless ability to find fault with others' mediocrity--suggesting that a certain type of intelligence may be at heart nothing more or less than a superior capacity for dissatisfaction."

"The desire for high status is never stronger than in situations where "ordinary" life fails to answer a median need for dignity and comfort."

"The essence of art is that its one case applies to thousands,' knew Schopenhauer."

"Most victories are, in the best way, acts of revenge."

"Everyone is extremely hard and troubled to be around. Everyone has something substantially wrong with them. Everyone is extremely hard to live with."

"The largest part of what we call 'personality' is determined by how we've opted to defend ourselves against anxiety and sadness"."

"At the top of the slope on the perimeter of the site, overlooking six lanes of motorway, is a diner frequented by lorry drivers who have either just unloaded or or are waiting to pick up their cargo. Anyone nursing a disappointment with domestic life would find relief in this tiled, brightly lit cafeteria with its smells of fries and petrol, for it has the reassuring feel of a place where everyone is just passing through--and which therefore has none of the close-knit or convivial atmosphere which could cast a humiliating light on one's own alienation. It suggests itself as an ideal location for Christmas lunch for those let down by their families."

"Feeling lost, crazy and desperate belongs to a good life as much as optimism, certainty and reason."