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

The primary thing we need to learn is not just maths or spelling, but how to be good: we need to learn about courage, self-control, reasonableness, independence and calm.

provincialism – and then rise above it to a more universal

‘To reduce your worry, you must assume that what you fear may happen is certainly going to happen.’

Then there are friendships that are really strategic acquaintances, where people take pleasure in each other’s company only in so far as they have hopes of taking advantage of it.

a Sartrean would strip away the surface normality to show the radical strangeness lurking beneath. Dinner really means that when your part of the planet has spun away from the energy of a distant hydrogen and helium explosion, you slide your knees under strips of a chopped-up tree and put sections of dead animals and plants in your mouth and chew,

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

If one were to judge of love according to the greatest part of the effects it produces, it might very justly pass for hatred rather than kindness. To say that one never flirts is in itself a form of flirtation.

down-to-earth