Don't despair: despair suggests you are in total control and know what is coming. You don't - surrender to events with hope. - Alain de Botton

There is a devilishly direct relationship between the significance of an idea and how nervous we become at the prospect of having to think about it.

established views have frequently emerged not through a process of faultless reasoning, but through centuries of intellectual muddle. There may be no good reason for things to be the way they are.

In literature, too, we admire prose in which a small and astutely arranged set of words has been constructed to carry a large consignment of ideas. 'We all have strength enough to bear the misfortunes of others,' writes La Rochefoucauld in an aphorism which transports us with an energy and exactitude comparable to that of Maillard bridge. The Swiss engineer reduces the number of supports just as the French writer compacts into a single line what lesser minds might have taken pages to express. We delight in complexity to which genius has lent an appearance of simplicity. (p 207)