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

Rather than feel guilt, people who have hurt us typically start to hate us – for reminding them of their cruelty.

Choosing a spouse and choosing a career: the two great decisions for which society refuses to set up institutional guidance and that are – together – responsible for destroying more of our lives than all others.

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.

Marriage ceremony: a couple making hopeful vows on behalf of two people whom they don’t know – and who won’t exist for another twenty years.

Feeling one is broadly leading the right life is entirely compatible with being grumpy most of the time.

When we are around small children who frustrate us, we don’t declare them evil; we find less alarming ways of interpreting the origins of their difficult behaviour: perhaps they are getting a bit tired, their gums are sore or they are upset by the arrival of a younger sibling. Given how immature every adult necessarily remains, the moves we execute

Much of life is about correctly determining on whom and on what we should finally give up.

We keep imagining that we haven’t met ‘the right person’; we overlook that we might have the wrong picture of love.

The only people we can think of as normal are those we don’t yet know very well.