Human beings invent just as many ways to sabotage their lives as to improve them. – Mark Goulston, Get Out of Your Own Way: Overcoming Self-Defeating Behavior, 1996

It is human nature to stand in the middle of a thing. – Mariane Moore, “A Grave,” Collected Poems, 1951

The doctors tell us of a physical disease called fatty degeneration of the heart… there is a moral malady—fatty degeneration of the soul; sooner or later it attacks every man, however noble his career, who puts self forward in his aims; who values fame because a personal possession. – Frank Lee Benedict, The Price She Paid, 1882