as the determinants of high status keep shifting, so, too, naturally, will the triggers of status anxiety be altered.

Not being understood may be taken as a sign that there is much in one to understand.

The desire for high status is never stronger than in situations where "ordinary" life fails to answer a median need for dignity and comfort.

A world where a majority had imbibed the lessons implicit within tragic art would be one in which the consequences of our failures would necessarily cease to weigh upon us so heavily.

Anxiety is the handmaiden of contemporary ambition.

Art was the very antithesis of crass moralism.

The quickest way to stop noticing something, may be to buy it—just as the quickest way to stop appreciating someone may be to marry him or her.

A sharp decline in actual deprivation may, paradoxically, have been accompanied by an ongoing and even escalating sense of fear of deprivation.

Judged against eternity, how little of what agitates us makes any difference.

Love and war are exactly alike. It is lawful to use tricks and slights to obtain a desired end.

I protect myself by refusing to know myself.

There is no need to corrupt people's morals. Their morals have been corrupting them for years.

The church is the primary arena in which we learn that glory does not consist in what we do for God but in what God does for us.

[P]eople think that the human brain is in the head. Nothing of the sort

I'm a firm believer in doing things that scare you.

When a man is trying to sell you something, don't imagine he is that polite all the time.

God created infinity, and man, unable to understand infinity, had to invent finite sets.

I guess a lot of bands play around until they come up with something they like.

My expectation is that technology always changes.