Heaven and Hell Quotes

“Depression is our way of telling ourselves that something is seriously wrong and needs working through and changing.”
― Neel Burton, Heaven and Hell: The Psychology of the Emotions

“Loneliness is the manifestation of the conflict between our desire for meaning and the absence of objective meaning from the universe.”
― Neel Burton, Heaven and Hell: The Psychology of the Emotions

“Solitude, the joy of being alone, stems from, as well as promotes, a state of maturity and inner richness.”
― Neel Burton, Heaven and Hell: The Psychology of the Emotions

“Now, it so happens that our culture—or lack of it, for our culture is in a state of flux and crisis—places a high value on materialism, and, by extension, greed. Our culture’s emphasis on greed is such that people have become immune to satisfaction. Having acquired one thing, they are immediately ready to desire the next thing that might suggest itself. Today, the object of desire is no longer satisfaction, but desire itself.”
― Neel Burton, Heaven and Hell: The Psychology of the Emotions

“True humility derives from a proper perspective of our human condition: one among billions on a small planet among billions, like a fungus on a tiny fragment of cheese. Of course, it is nearly impossible for human beings to remain this objective for very long, but truly humble people are nonetheless far more conscious of the insignificance of their true relations, an insignificance that verges on non-existence. A speck of dust does not think itself more superior or inferior than another, nor does it concern itself for what other specks of dust might or might not think. Enthralled by the miracle of existence, the truly humble person lives not for herself or her image, but for life itself, in a condition of pure peace and pleasure.”
― Neel Burton, Heaven and Hell: The Psychology of the Emotions

“Patience, I find, is highly correlated with love.”
― Neel Burton, Heaven and Hell: The Psychology of the Emotions

“And so, the best education consists not in being taught but in being inspired; and if I could, I would rather inspire a single person than teach a thousand.”
― Neel Burton, Heaven and Hell: The Psychology of the Emotions

“Socrates says that this cannot be, since one person may love another who does not love him back, or even who hates him.”
― Neel Burton, Heaven and Hell: The Psychology of the Emotions

“What’s more, it is often over the most inconsequential desires, such as what to wear or what music to play, that we exercise the most control, while whom we lust after or fall in love with seems mostly if not entirely without our control. Yet, a single rogue desire can lay waste to the best-laid plans of half a lifetime.”
― Neel Burton, Heaven and Hell: The Psychology of the Emotions

“The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n. ​— ​Milton, Paradise Lost”
― Neel Burton, Heaven and Hell: The Psychology of the Emotions

“Envy can also give rise to more subtle defensive reactions such as ingratitude, irony, scorn, snobbery, and narcissism, which all have in common the use of contempt to minimize the existential threat posed by the advantages of others. Another common defence against envy is to incite it in those whom we would envy, reasoning that, if they envy us, we have no reason to envy them.”
― Neel Burton, Heaven and Hell: The Psychology of the Emotions

“As human nature does not leave much place for it, gratitude is an attainment of maturity, or, to be more precise, emotional maturity,”
― Neel Burton, Heaven and Hell: The Psychology of the Emotions

“Faced with the same set of circumstances, people with high self-esteem are more prone to guilt than to shame, and more likely to take corrective or redemptive action.”
― Neel Burton, Heaven and Hell: The Psychology of the Emotions

“The world would be a much better place if we could all spend a year looking out of our window.”
― Neel Burton, Heaven and Hell: The Psychology of the Emotions

“Existential anxiety is so disturbing that most people avoid it at all costs, constructing a false reality out of goals, aspirations, habits, customs, values, culture, and religion in a bid to deceive themselves that their lives are special and meaningful and that death is distant or delusory.”
― Neel Burton, Heaven and Hell: The Psychology of the Emotions

“The Internet has become the great comforter and seems to offer it all: news, knowledge, music, entertainment, shopping, relationships, and even sex. But over time, it foments envy and division, confuses our needs and priorities, desensitizes us to violence and suffering, and, by creating a false sense of connectedness, entrenches superficial relationships at the cost of living ones.”
― Neel Burton, Heaven and Hell: The Psychology of the Emotions

“Our emotions also motivate us, and people with a diminished capacity for emotion—whether from brain injury, severe depression, or another mental disorder—find it especially hard to make decisions let alone act upon them.”
― Neel Burton, Heaven and Hell: The Psychology of the Emotions

“Desires on the other hand aim at altering reality so that it comes to accord with them. So, whereas emotions (and beliefs) have a mind-to-world direction of fit, desires have a world-to-mind direction of fit: emotions aim at reflecting reality, desires at changing it.”
― Neel Burton, Heaven and Hell: The Psychology of the Emotions

“the emotions are utterly neglected by our system of education, leading to millions of mis-lived lives.”
― Neel Burton, Heaven and Hell: The Psychology of the Emotions

“Nothing can make us feel more alive, or more human, than our emotions, or hurt us more.”
― Neel Burton, Heaven and Hell: The Psychology of the Emotions

“To be happy on our own is the last and highest form of freedom.”
― Neel Burton, Heaven and Hell: The Psychology of the Emotions

“Wonder begets culture, which begets yet more wonder, and the end of wonder is wisdom, which is the state of perpetual wonder.”
― Neel Burton, Heaven and Hell: The Psychology of the Emotions

“Socrates is a shining example of a man who bravely lived up to his ideals, and, in the end, bravely died for them. Throughout his life, he never lost faith in the mind’s ability to discern and decide, and so to apprehend and master reality. Nor did he ever betray truth and integrity for a pitiable life of self-deception and semi-consciousness. In seeking relentlessly to align mind with matter and thought with fact, he remained faithful both to himself and to the world, with the result that he is still alive in this sentence and millions of others that have been written about him. More than a great philosopher, Socrates was the living embodiment of the dream that philosophy might one day set us free.”
― Neel Burton, Heaven and Hell: The Psychology of the Emotions

“Poor feeling hijacks thinking for self-deception: to hide harsh truths, avoid action, evade responsibility, and, as the existentialists might put it, flee from freedom. Thus, poor feeling is a kind of moral failing, indeed, the deepest kind, and virtue principally consists in correcting and refining our emotions and the values that they reflect. To feel the right thing is to do the right thing, without any particular need for conscious thought or effort.”
― Neel Burton, Heaven and Hell: The Psychology of the Emotions

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― Neel Burton, Heaven and Hell: The Psychology of the Emotions

“Gratitude promotes consciousness, enthusiasm, joy, empathy, and tranquillity, while protecting from anxiety, sadness, loneliness, regret, and envy, with which it is fundamentally incompatible.”
― Neel Burton, Heaven and Hell: The Psychology of the Emotions

“When we think of company, we usually think of people. But animals too are company, as are plants, the sea, wine, and all beautiful things. I call them "low intensity company", and, often, I prefer them.”
― Neel Burton, Heaven and Hell: The Psychology of the Emotions

“Not all negative emotions are negative in the same way. Negative emotions about the self are much worse than negative emotions about externals. Which is why a victory rings hollow when it is not founded in virtue, and it is better to be on the losing side.”
― Neel Burton, Heaven and Hell: The Psychology of the Emotions

“Repairing the gulf between what we can bear or dare to feel and what we really feel is the unfinished work of a lifetime.”
― Neel Burton, Heaven and Hell: The Psychology of the Emotions

“Expending effort on anything other than short-term advantage could jeopardize their very survival.”
― Neel Burton, Heaven and Hell: The Psychology of the Emotions