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Look around: this is reality. It consists of a whole lot of atoms, a few of which constitute you. What could it even mean to say you don’t belong?

— Meditations for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman (Page 36)

The astounding reality – in the words of Sheldon B. Kopp, a genial and brilliant American psychotherapist who died in 1999 – is that you’re pretty much free to do whatever you like. You need only face the consequences.

— Meditations for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman (Page 29)

So you just do the thing, once, with absolutely no guarantee you’ll ever manage to do it again. But then perhaps you find that you do do it again, the next day, or a few days later, and maybe again, and again – until before you know it, you’ve developed that most remarkable thing, not a willpower-driven system or routine but an emergent practice of writing, or meditating, or listening to your kids, or building a business.

— Meditations for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman (Page 27)

‘Our suffering,’ as Mel Weitsman, another Zen teacher, puts it, ‘is believing there’s a way out.’

— Meditations for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman (Page 22)

Das menschliche Dasein lässt sich nicht lösen, nur leben.

— Mitte des Lebens by Barbara Bleisch (Page 224)

If we cultivate our college campuses either as echo chambers or as chocolate-box assortments of viewpoints, we think of young people first and foremost as receptacles of opinions, as consumers of content, and as subjects whose experiences must be carefully managed.

— Lost in Thought by Zena Hitz (Page 191)

We pretend that others are indeed swallowed by lies, but we ourselves have escaped. We imagine that our social class or group allows us special access to truth. Accordingly, our focus on truth and falsehood must begin with ourselves.

— Lost in Thought by Zena Hitz (Page 86)