Great Thinkers: Simple Tools from 60 Great Thinkers to Improve Your Life Today (The School of Life Library)

The underlying fantasy of love is that by getting close to this person, you can become a little like they are. They can help you to grow to your full potential.

‘Life has no intrinsic worth, but is kept in motion merely by want and illusion.’

provincialism – and then rise above it to a more universal

There are some people who would never have fallen in love, if they had not heard there was such a thing.

‘to learn that we have said or done a stupid thing is nothing; we must learn a more ample and important lesson; that we are but blockheads … On the highest throne in the world, we are seated, still, upon our arses.’ And, lest we forget: ‘Kings and philosophers shit, and so do ladies.’

In every sense, much of what we get, we don’t deserve.

We are just like animals – except, because of our greater self-awareness, even more unhappy.

He observed that humans have many ‘higher’ needs that are in fact very sensible and good, and yet that currently lie outside of capitalist enterprise: among these, our need for education, for self-understanding, for beautiful cities and for rewarding social lives.

We’re all lustful, mad, erratic, deluded deviants with no earthly chance of happiness