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Maturity' really means: being very unsurprised by, and calm around, pain and disappointment.

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And yet, troublingly, there is one difference between 'labour' and other elements [raw materials, machinery] which conventional economics does not hav...more

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You normally have to be bashed about a bit by life to see the point of daffodils, sunsets and uneventful nice days.

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There is a danger of developing a blanket distaste for modern life which could have its attractions but lack the all-important images to help us ident...more

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What we seek, at the deepest level, is inwardly to resemble, rather than physically to possess, the objects and places that touch us through their bea...more

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The attentions of others matter to us because we are afflicted by a congenital uncertainty as to our own value, as a result of which affliction we ten...more

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It is perhaps when our lives are at their most problematic that we are likely to be most receptive to beautiful things.

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[Donald] Keene observed [in a book entitled The Pleasures of Japanese Literature, 1988] that the Japanese sense of beauty has long sharply differed fr...more

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A dominant impulse on encountering beauty is to wish to hold on to it, to possess it and give it weight in one’s life. There is an urge to say, ‘I was...more

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Few in this world are ever simply nasty; those who hurt us are themselves in pain. The appropriate response is hence never cynicism nor aggression but...more