On account of its scale and complexity, the world will always outstrip the capacity of any single body to ask fertile questions of it.

If the world seems unfair or beyond our understanding, sublime places suggest that it is not surprising that things should be thus. We are the playthings of the forces that laid out the oceans and chiselled the mountains.

Pegging your contentment to the overall state of the world rather than of your own life: the basis of morality, or a sort of madness?

Much of the really serious trouble in the world gets going with a sense of humiliation.

When Proust urges us to evaluate the world properly, he repeatedly reminds us of the value of modest scenes.