“When does a job feel meaningful? Whenever it allows us to generate delight or reduce suffering in others. Though we are often taught to think of ourselves as inherently selfish, the longing to act ...”

“After Carol had left, as Symons threw away a pile of used tissues and rearranged the cushions on the couch, he remarked that the most common and unhelpful illusion plaguing those who came to see hi...”

“The challenge lies in knowing how to bring this sort of day to a close. His mind has been wound to a pitch of concentration by the interactions of the office. Now there are only silence and the fla...”

“Our exertions generally find no enduring physical correlatives. We are diluted in gigantic intangible collective projects, which leave us wondering what we did last year and, more profoundly, where...”

“It is according to how we are able to answer the question of what we do (normally the first enquiry we will have to field in any new acquaintance) that the quality of our reception is likely to be ...”

“A 'good job' can be both practically attractive while still not good enough to devote your entire life to.”

“The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another; and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it.”

“I devote my life in service of humanity.”

“You can get what you want. It depends on the strength of your desire.”

“But the dream of something unlikely has its own special name. We call it hope.”

“With the Union my best and dearest earthly hopes are entwined.”

“I do not give money for just mere hopes.”

“Anything was better than nothing. Half-full was better than empty. Ignorance was the lowest form of humiliation and suffering.”

“It is not the pain and the wounds that are the worst. The worst is the humiliation.”

“According to Tobias, women hang around longer because theyre less capable of indignation and better at being humiliated, for what is old age but one long string of indignities? What person of integ...”