The greatest things in the world are brought about by other things which we count as nothing: little causes we overlook but which at length accumulate.
When you get into a fight with your partner or a friend, you usually have some weird, specific thing that you hold on to that you fight about that has nothing to do with what's going on.
In the discovery of secret things and in the investigation of hidden causes, stronger reasons are obtained from sure experiments and demonstrated arguments than from probable conjectures and the opinions of philosophical speculators of the common sort.
The idea that our mental life is affected by hidden causes is a mainstay of psychology.
In real life, when you have an emotional experience, it's never just because of the thing that's been said. There's the backstory. It's like [Ernest] Hemingway's iceberg theory - the current emotional moment is the tip of the iceberg and all of the past is the seven-eighths of the iceberg that's underwater.
If your project doesn't work, look for the part that you didn't think was important.
History is opaque. You see what comes out, not the script that produces events, ... The generator of historical events is different from the events themselves, much as the minds of the gods cannot be read just by witnessing their deeds.
The vulgar call good fortune that which really is produced by the calculations of genius.
Small are the seeds fate does unheeded sow Of slight beginnings to important ends.
Let us not forget that the reasons for human actions are usually incalculably more complex and diverse than we tend to explain them later, and are seldom clearly manifest.
As the plant springs from, and could not be without, the seed, so every act of man springs from the hidden seeds of thought, and could not have appeared without them.
Symptoms that may seem psychiatric or psychological can actually be signs of a medical condition.
Most of the time when couples argue, it’s not really about the thing they’re fighting about; there’s a deeper reason why they’re arguing.
The peculiar essence of our banking system is an unprecedented trust between man and man. And when that trust is much weakened by hidden causes, a small accident may greatly hurt it, and a great accident for a moment may almost destroy it.
