Every refugee finds his American dream on the backs of the nightmare of Black suffering in America.
Whatever the flows of our modern times are the idea is that you can create something new out of nothing.
Today, luxury resides in everything that is becoming rare: communion with nature, silence, meditation, slowness rediscovered, the pleasure of living out of step with others, studious idleness, the enjoyment of the major works of the mind–these are all privileges that cannot be bought because they are literally priceless.
An overblown conscience is an empty conscience.
By the duty to be happy, I thus refer to the ideology. . . that urges us to evaluate everything in terms of pleasure and displeasure. . . on the one hand, we have to make the most of our lives; on the other, we have to be sorry and punish ourselves if we don't succeed in doing so. This is a perversion of a very beautiful idea: that everyone has a right to control his own destiny and to improve his life.
The cult of happiness turns into a huge concern which to my opinion is exactly contrary to what happiness should be: a paradise of enchantment.
You don't have to give people fish everyday but instead you must give them the pole to learn how to fish themselves.
One thing I've learned: you can know anything, it's all there, you just have to find it.
Junior colleges are high schools with ashtrays.
Protestantism came and gave a great blow to the religious and ritualistic rhythm of the year, in human life. Non-conformity almostfinished the deed. . . . Mankind has got to get back to the rhythm of the cosmos, and the permanence of marriage.
At some point in the journey of being in it for yourself, you realize you need other people. Any good frontier story, in some respect, is about that.