Perhaps narcissism is best defined as a need to look on other people as mirrored surfaces who satisfy us only when they reflect back a loving or admiring image of ourselves. When we look into another’s eyes, in other words, we are not looking to see who they are, but how we are reflected in their eyes. By this definition, which of us can honestly disown our share of narcissism?
The trick of being a good guest is never to ask any questions about the composition of the household. Hosts, even the grandest, are nervous creatures and interpret curiosity as evidence of dissatisfaction.
The memory of pain soon goes, the memory of pleasure lingers, that is one of life’s happier truths.
Curiosity has wrongly, by those with a vested interest in ignorance and their own revealed truths, been traduced and eternally characterised as a dangerous felicide, but you, dearest of dear, dear readers, know that Curiosity lights the way to glory.
Civilisation, after all, is not an attitude of mind, it is an attribute of wealth.
He knew he could never jingle change in his pocket or park his car like a confident adult, he was the Adrian he had always been, casting a guilty look over a furtive shoulder, living in eternal dread of a grown-up striding forward to clip his ear.
Intuition he did not reject. He knew that it is part of our equipment, and the sensitiveness he valued in himself and in others is connected with it. But he also knew that it can make dancing dervishes of us all, and that the man who believes a thing is true because he feels it in his bones, is not really very far removed from the man who believes it on the authority of a policeman’s truncheon.
There are people like me who just seem to be made of tweed.
Of course the Greeks were not the only people to weave a tapestry of legends and lore out of the puzzling fabric of existence.
Today it was commerce that Europe valued and it was the businessmen who, having exploited what the scientists and thechnologits had done for the world, now reaped the rewards.
Don’t go looking for something psychological that isn’t there. I have a bath after any kind of strenuous exercise. It doesn’t mean I feel dirty,” though he did, “it doesn’t mean I’m trying to wash you out of my life,” though he was, “it doesn’t mean guilt, shame, repentance or anything like that,” though it did. “It just means I want a bath.
It is the destiny of children of spirit to soar too close to the sun and fall no matter how many times they are warned of the danger. Some will make it, but many do not.
If days be good, they shall pass, which is a lowering thought. If they be bad, they shall pass, which is cheering.
Over the years however, my nose grew and grew and it became apparent by the time I was fourteen that, like its owner, it was not growing straight.
Not every line of Hamlet is a jewel. nor every square inch of the Sistine Chapel Ceiling worthy of admiring gasps.
The numerous moons of Saturn include Titan, Iapetus, Atlas, Prometheus, Hyperion, Tethys, Rhea, and Calypso.
I suppose people were trying to be kind and protect me from the humiliation of discovering that, even after an operation to straighten my ridiculous nose, I would still look a mess. The trauma of finding out that a straight-nosed Stephen looked every bit as unappetising as a bent-nosed Stephen might have tipped me completely over the edge.
What walks on four feet in the morning, two feet at noon, and three in the evening?
You will not find the truth but the truth will find you,’ ‘Seek not to know, but know to seek,’ ‘You don’t make mistakes, mistakes make you.
Everyone else new you ever meet, and this continues through life, is stronger than you are, knows the system better and sees right through to the back of your brain and finds what they see to be wholly inadequate. Everyone you encounter carries, as it were, a huge club behind their back, while all you hold behind yours is a weedy cotton-bud.