“Ive come to think that flourishing consists of putting yourself in situations in which you lose self-consciousness and become fused with other people, experiences, or tasks. It happens sometimes wh...”

“This is how life works. Deciding whom to love is not an alien form of decision-making, a romantic interlude in the midst of normal life. Instead, decisions about whom to love are more intense versi...”

“The imagination simplifies our endless desires and causes us to fantasize that they can be fulfilled.”

“Across the centuries the moral systems from medival chivalry to Bruce Springsteen love anthems have worked the same basic way. They take immediate selfish interests and enmesh them within transcend...”

“They finally achieve a sort of outward-facing union.”

“In times of crisis, you get a public reaction that is incoherence on stilts. On the one hand, most people know that the government is not in the oil business. They don't want it in the oil business...”

“If a man does not work passionately - even furiously - at being the best in the world at what he does, he fails his talent, his destiny, and his God.”

“I mean a man whose hopes and aims may sometimes lie (as most men's sometimes do, I dare say) above the ordinary level, but to whom the ordinary level will be high enough after all if it should prov...”

“Not everything you're good at is what you're called to do.”

“You see, in this country are a number of youths who do not like to work, and the college is an excellent place for them.”

“Sometimes the gap between what you are and what you want to be is a little piece of paper called your college degree. So jump.”

“I only want to write. And there's no college for that except life.”

“Education doesnt make you happy. Nor does freedom. We dont become happy just because were free if we are. Or because weve been educated if we have. But because education may be the means by which...”

“Because I trust in the ever-changing climate of the heart. (At least, today I feel that way.) I think it is necessary to have many experiences for the sake of feeling something; for the sake of bei...”

“The past has no power over the present moment.”