This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life

by David Foster Wallace

You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn’t.

If you worship money and things — if they are where you tap real meaning in life — then you will never have enough.

Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you.

Worship your intellect, being seen as smart — you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out.