It appeared that the one area in which Sir Bob excelled was anxiety. He was marked out by his relentless ability to find fault with others’ mediocrit… - Alain de Botton

He was marked out by his relentless ability to find fault with others' mediocrity — suggesting that a certain type of intelligence may be at heart nothing more or less than a superior capacity for dissatisfaction.

Does beauty give birth to love? Or does love give birth to beauty? Did I love Chloe because she was beautiful? Or was she beautiful because I loved her?

history tells us of the case of a man living under the peculiar delusion that he was a fried egg. Quite how or when this idea had entered his head, no one knew, but he now refused to sit down anywhere for fear that he would ‘break himself’ and ‘spill the yolk’. His doctors tried sedatives and other drugs to appease his fears, but nothing seemed to work. Finally, one of them made the effort to enter the mind of the deluded patient and suggested that he should carry a piece of toast with him at all times, which he could place on any chair he wished to sit on, and thereby protect himself from breaking his yolk. From then on, the deluded man was never seen without a piece of toast handy, and was able to continue a more or less normal existence.

"To one's enemies: "I hate myself more than you ever could.