With slight misconceptions of reality we fabricate our hopes and beliefs, and we live off crusts that we call cakes, like poor children who make-believe they’re happy.

Boredom and ineffective attempts to escape tedium are the perpetual lot of humankind.

Disquietude that springs from the fundamental nature of being a human being is vaster and more encompassing than depression, which has a cause and therefore a cure.

A life premised upon honest effort and questing for love is bound to generate regret and remorse.

An uncertain evil causes anxiety because, at the bottom of one's heart, one goes on hoping till the last moment that it may not be true; a certain evil, on the other hand, instills, for a time, a kind of dreary tranquillity.

This little boy playing next to me is an intellectual mass of cells - better yet, he's a clockwork of subatomic movements, a strange electrical conglomeration of millions of solar systems in minature. [58, Zenith trans.]

A mature person reaps joy in the commonplace acts of living, appreciates the serenity of just being, while balancing the responsibilities that come naturally about when deeply immersed in family and community affairs. Directing their attention outward, assisting other people in their troubled times, while denying themselves the indulgence of self-absorption frees a person’s bidding mind from a jumble of discordant thoughts, wants, and unholy bequests.

A person can hurry through or sleep walk through life, but whenever they stop to catch their breath or awaken from a long nap, they will find apprehension, disquiet, and fretfulness waiting their directed attention.

Attempting to succeed in a competitive external environment, we can lose track of how to live without anxiety.