It is odd that the skeleton of a house is cheerful when the skeleton of a man is mournful, since we only see it after the man is destroyed. [] It is a pity there is no scaffolding round a human baby. G.K. Chesterton

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"A belief in hell and the knowledge that every ambition is doomed to frustration at the hands of a skeleton have never prevented the majority of human beings from behaving as though death were no more than an unfounded rumor." -Aldous Huxley

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America forms the longest and straightest bone in the earth's skeleton. Ellsworth Huntington

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

Never feel you have enough.

Its the truth.

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.

On one level, we all know this stuff already its been codified as myths, proverbs, cliches, bromides, epigrams, parables: the skeleton of every great story.

The trick is keeping the truth up-front in daily consciousness.

Worship power you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay.

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

And so on.

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

We turn skeletons into goddesses and look to them as if they might teach us how not to need.

Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia, Marya Hornbacher