The School of Life: Quotes to Live By: A collection to revive and inspire

The true test of moral character: how we treat people who can do nothing for us.

As adults, we strive to cultivate the character traits that might have rescued our parents.

The largest part of what we call ‘personality’ is determined by how we have opted to defend ourselves against anxiety and sadness.

We shouldn’t be so surprised at the enormous levels of mental illness at large in society; we need only get clear how bad we collectively are at love, how poor we are at lending sympathy, at listening, at offering reassurance, at feeling compassion and at forgiving – and, conversely, how good we are at hating, shaming and neglecting.

A goal of parenting: to make offspring feel so special for a time, they’ll later have the strength to acknowledge and make their peace with their true insignificance.

Love your children reliably and they’ll outgrow you. Ignore them and they’ll be obsessed with you for life.

A ‘boring person’ is merely someone lacking the courage to be sufficiently in touch with the more troubled visceral parts of themselves.

The two things we try so hard never to communicate directly to our partners in love: ‘I need you’ and ‘You have hurt me’. We’ll go to any lengths to act out our pain rather than spell out our vulnerability.

People reveal their sanity by their gracious knowledge and acceptance of their mad sides. A standard question on any initial dinner date should simply be: ‘In what particular ways are you crazy?’ We should beware of those who can’t answer or get offended.