Nothing in its essence is one way or the other.
Most people don't have the advantage of being able to evaluate their doctor in advance.
The ancient dialogue between reason and the senses is almost always more interestingly and passionately resolved in favor of the senses.
Never once, during any of my bouts of depression, had I been inclined or able to pick up a telephone and ask a friend for help. It wasn't in me.
Mood disorders are terribly painful illnesses, and they are isolating illnesses. And they make people feel terrible about themselves when, in fact, they can be treated.
Curiosity, wonder, and passion are defining qualities of imaginative minds and great teachers. . . Restlessness and discontent are vital things. . . Intense experience and suffering instruct us in ways less intense emotions can never do.
But money spent while manic doesn't fit into the Internal Revenue Service concept of medical expense or business loss. So after mania, when most depressed, you're given excellent reason to be even more so.
I am really looking forward as I get older and older, to being less and less nice.
The question the doubter does not ask is whether faith was really useless or simply not used. What would you think of a boy who gave up learning to ride a bicycle, complaining that he hurt himself because his bicycle stopped moving so he had no choice but to fall off? If he wanted to sit comfortably while remaining stationary, he should not have chosen a bicycle but a chair. Similarly faith must be put to use, or it will become useless.
Derek Bok asks the right question, 'What policies would produce the greatest happiness?' and he gives great and often startling answers, combining his deep knowledge of politics with the new findings of happiness research.
If some one loves a flower of which just one example exists among all the millions and millions of stars, that's enough to make him happy when he looks at the stars. He tells himself, "My flower's up there somewhere. . . . " But if the sheep eats the flower, then for him it's as if, suddenly, all the stars went out. And that isn't important?