A world where a majority had imbibed the lessons implicit within tragic art would be one in which the consequences of our failures would necessarily cease to weigh upon us so heavily.
Because beauty is typically the result of a few qualities working in concert, it can take more to guarantee the appeal of a bridge or a house than strength alone. (p 205)
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, re...
The moment we cry in a film is not when things are sad but when they turn out to be more beautiful than we expected them to be.
What we call a home is merely any place that succeeds in making more consistenly available to us the important truths which the wider world ignores, or which our distracted and irresolute selves have...
We take this idea of love (being loved, rather than loving) with us into adulthood. Grown up, we hope for a re-creation of what it felt like to be ministered to and indulged. In a secret corner of our...
We gaan in op reusachtige, ongrijpbare collectieve projecten, zodat we ons afvragen wat we vorig jaar deden, sterker nog, waar wij zijn gebleven en wat er van ons geworden is. We zien onze verspilde k...
To a shameful extent, the charm of marriage boils down to how unpleasant it is to be alone. This isn’t necessarily our fault as individuals. Society as a whole appears determined to render the single...
There may be significant things to learn about people by looking at what annoys them most.
The problem with clichés is not that they contain false ideas, but rather that they are superficial articulations of very good ones.
The man who shouts every time he loses his house keys is betraying a beautiful but rash faith in a universe in which keys never go astray.
Properly told, stories are able to operate on two levels. On the surface, they deal with involving a range of facts related to a given time and place, a local culture and a social group--and it is th...
Mary in Christianity, Isis in ancient Egypt, Demeter in Greece, Venus in Rome and Guan Yin in China have all functioned as conduits to recollections of early tenderness. Their statues often stand in d...
Life seems to be a process of replacing one anxiety with another and substituting one desire for another--which is not to say that we should never strive to overcome any of our anxieties or fulfil any...
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 dec...
Few in this world are ever simply nasty; those who hurt us are themselves in pain. The appropriate response is hence never cynicism nor aggression but, at the rare moments one can manage it, always lo...
I like working with people. I believe change can only come through collaboration.
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...
The romantic person instinctively sees marriage in terms of emotions, but what a couple actually gets up to together over a lifetime has much more in common with the workings of a small business. They...
One of the best protections against disappointment is to have a lot going on.