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‘Everything that we have done cannot be undone. No achievement can be taken away’
‘News about our amazing plastic brain supports the view that what we can be is much more diverse than we think’
‘The dentist’s receptionist may not be the best person in whom to confide our deepest worries’
‘Studies have found that people who do acts of kindness experience increased happiness and well-being’
‘How, without being rude, do you discourage a friend who wants to be in touch much more than you’d like?’
‘You might escape from pain and loss by cultivating a disinterested detachment. But for me this comes at too high a cost’
‘Being online offers pleasures that demand little time and effort, when most of what is valuable requires a fair bit of both’
Conviction is overrated and the value of ‘knowing your own mind’ misunderstood
‘The main quality you need to develop is compassion — for yourself and your child’
‘Gloom is easily mistaken for intellectual depth. Have you ever seen a photo of a smiling existentialist?’
‘Sometimes it pays to take charge of a situation instead of just letting it run its course’
‘We need to stop attempting to escape and to turn towards our experience’
‘True respect requires everyone to see others as capable of hearing criticisms and debating about them’
It’s not just friends who can leave us red-faced but even compatriots who behave badly abroad
‘So interdependent is society that no one can claim to owe their affluence solely to their own talent or effort’
‘Simply accepting that there are no ultimate grounds for anything looks like a cop-out’
‘If we have a tendency to run away from problems, we’d do well to question our motivation in seeking a change of scene’
‘Should we at least try to purge metaphor from rigorous disciplines such as philosophy, science and economics?’
‘Far from being the hardest word, saying sorry is much easier than addressing the legacy of historical injustices’
‘Excellence usually requires discipline and effort, and these are helped by the structures of routines’
‘The transitory nature of all things applies to partners as well as iPads’
‘Having fun involves living in the moment without a care as to whether what you are enjoying is edifying’
‘Exercising control over how we feel is more tenuous than we tend to believe’
‘Developing compassion for ourselves may lead us to become more compassionate towards others’
‘We usually agonise more over the mistakes we know we have made than the bigger ones we might have made’
