There may not be an immediate solution to many of our sorrows, but it helps immeasurably to know their contours.

There is a fundamental distinction to be made between two kinds of thinking: figuring out what we would like to achieve, and working out how to achieve it. Put another way, there is a key difference between strategy on the one hand and execution on the other. Strategy is about determining our overall aims; execution comprises everything that

Life, properly felt, is an infinitely alarming process even in its apparently calmer stretches.

We are ultimately simply scared; scared of doing something and getting it wrong, of making a decision and realising that it didn’t improve anything. However, our inaction is also a form of choice, and not necessarily of the optimal kind.

‘The statue is already in the stone’, he wrote, ‘my work is to liberate it.’

The core reason why we can’t hold onto our bigger, more essential ideas is because, even though they are frequently crucial to our development, they also tend to induce intense anxiety.

he had risen to greatness only by doubting much of the knowledge that had been built up before him and putting immense faith in the fruits of his own mind.

Not all good ideas have yet been had, and our minds are as good a place as any in which they might one day hatch.

It is a distinctive quirk of our minds that few of the emotions we carry in them are properly acknowledged, understood or truly felt.