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The largest part of what we call 'personality' is determined by how we've opted to defend ourselves against anxiety and sadness".

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Though it may feel otherwise, enjoying life is no more dangerous than apprehending it with continuous anxiety and gloom.

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Our feelings of anxiety are genuine but confused signals that something is amiss, and so need to be listened to and patiently interpreted -- processes...more

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It is one of the unexpected disasters of the modern age that our new unparalleled access to information has come at the price of our capacity to conce...more

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It is the most ambitious and driven among us who are the most sorely in need of having our reckless hopes dampened through immersive dousings in the d...more

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It is hope--with regard to our careers, our love lives, our children, our politicians, and our planet--that is primarily to blame for angering and emb...more

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Anxiety is the handmaiden of contemporary ambition.

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A sharp decline in actual deprivation may, paradoxically, have been accompanied by an ongoing and even escalating sense of fear of deprivation.

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We are tempted to believe that certain achievements and possessions will give us enduring satisfaction. We are invited to imagine ourselves scaling th...more

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[L]ife is a phenomenon in need of criticism, for we are, as fallen creatures, in permanent danger of worshipping false gods, of failing to understand ...more

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Life seems to be a process of replacing one anxiety with another and substituting one desire for another--which is not to say that we should never str...more

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as the determinants of high status keep shifting, so, too, naturally, will the triggers of status anxiety be altered.

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Blessed with riches and possibilities far beyond anything imagined by ancestors who tilled the unpredictable soil of medieval Europe, modern populatio...more

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In the immediate vicinity, there might well be stability and peace. In the garden, a breeze may be swaying the branches of the plum tree and dust may ...more