An argument in a couple: 2 people attempting to introduce each other to important truths - by panicked shouting.
In a secularising world, art has replaced religion as a touchstone of our reverence and devotion.
After 40 (old age for most of man's history), one should strive to be more or less packed and ready to go were the end call to come.
A danger of travel is that we see things at the wrong time, before we have had a chance to build up the necessary receptivity and when new information is therefore as useless and fugitive as necklace beads without a connecting chain.
Memory is... similar to anticipation: an instrument of simplification and selection.
In the gap between who we wish one day to be and who we are at present, must come pain, anxiety, envy and humiliation.
Without sex, we would be dangerously invulnerable. We might believe we were not ridiculous. We wouldn't know rejection and humiliation so intimately.
The problem is if you really believe in a society where those who merit to get to the top, get to the top, you’ll also, by implication … believe in a society where those who deserve to get to the bottom also get to the bottom and stay there.
One of our major flaws, and causes of unhappiness, is that we find it hard to take note of appreciate and be grateful for what is always around us. We suffer because we lose sight of the value of what is before us and yearn, often unfairly, for the imagined attraction elsewhere.
Most of our childhood is stored not in photos, but in certain biscuits, lights of day, smells, textures of carpet.
Only as we mature does affection begin to depend on achievement.
I am in general a very pessimistic person with an optimistic, day to day take on things. The bare facts of life are utterly terrifying. And yet, one can laugh. Indeed, one has to laugh precisely because of the darkness: the nervous laughter of the trenches.
The telephone becomes an instrument of torture in the demonic hands of a beloved who doesn't call.
We study biology, physics, movements of glaciers... Where are the classes on envy, feeling wronged, despair, bitterness.
That said, deciding to avoid other people does not necessarily equate with having no desire whatsoever for company; it may simply reflect a dissatisfaction with what—or who—is available. Cynics are, in the end, only idealists with awkwardly high standards. In Chamfort's words, 'It is sometimes said of a man who lives alone that he does not like society. This is like saying of a man that he does not like going for walks because he is not fond of walking at night in the forêt de Bondy.
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.
It is in dialogue with pain that many beautiful things acquire their value. Acquaintance with grief turns out to be one of the more unusual prerequisites of architectural appreciation. We might, quite aside from all other requirements, need to be a little sad before buildings can properly touch us.
Curiosity takes ignorance seriously - and is confident enough to admit when it's in the dark. It is aware of not knowing. And then it sets out to do something about it.
The good parent: someone who doesn't mind, for a time, being hated by their children.
Unnatural to expect that learning to be happy should be any easier than, say, learning to play the violin or require any less practice.
Maturity: knowing where you're crazy, trying to warn others of the fact and striving to keep yourself under control.
There's a whole category of people who miss out by not allowing themselves to be weird enough.
I feel that the great challenge of our time is the communication of ideas.
As victims of hurt, we frequently don't bring up what ails us, because so many wounds look absurd in the light of day.
He did not mean to depress us, rather to free us from expectations which inspire bitterness. It is consoling, when love has let us down, to hear that happiness was never part of the plan.
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