Jed Rubenfeld

“The pity of it was that this discovery, if such it was, now seemed so stale, so profitless to me. What good was it? What good did thinking ever do?”

“There is no mystery to happiness.Unhappy men are all alike. Some wound they suffered long ago, some wish denied, some blow to pride, some kindling spark of love put out by scorn- or worse, indifference- cleaves to them, or they to it, and so they live each day within a shroud of yesterdays. The happy man does not look back. He doesn't look ahead. He lives in the present. But there's the rub. The present can never deliver one thing: meaning. The ways of happiness and meaning are not the same. To find happiness, a man need only live in the moment; he need only live for the moment. But if he wants meaning- the meaning of his dreams, his secrets, his life- a man must reinhabit his past, however dark, and live for the future, however uncertain. Thus nature dangles happiness and meaning before us all, insisting only that we choose between them. For myself, I have always chosen meaning.”

“Unhappiness is caused when we cannot let go of our memories.”

“For society, marriage is undoubtedly beneficial. But the burdens of civilized morality are too heavy for many to bear.”

“Death releases the energy into air. If a true catastrophe is looming, the disturbance becomes such that a sensitive individual may become highly troubled by it. He may be aware exactly when and where it will occur. He may see an aura around people who are soon to die. Or he may see images of the disaster beforehand...”

“A woman's love for a man is ha;f animal passion and half hate. The more a woman loves a man, the more she hates him. If a man is worth having, he must be a woman's superior; if he is her superior, part of her must hate him. It is only in beauty we surpass you, and it is therefore no wonder that we worship beauty above all else.”

“Satisfying a savage instinct is incomparably more pleasurable than satisfying a civilized one.”

“A woman's love for a man is half animal passion and half hate. The more a woman loves a man, the more she hates him.”