The good life is not one immune to sadness, but one in which suffering contributes to our development.
Conflict is the gadfly of thought. It stirs us to observation and memory. It instigates to invention. It shocks us out of sheeplike passivity, and sets us at noting and contriving.
The creative process is a form of meditation.
"We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further."