Does your would be borrower work as hard for his money as you do for yours? If he is in a field that doesn’t produce much money painting, acting that is his choice, but why should you support his “artistry” while you are nine-to-fiving (or nine-to-nining) in a job that enervates as well as pleases?
Some [...]

I call everybody—limo drivers, salesgirls, maitre d’s, cleaning women, doormen—sweetie, honey, pussycat, without a twinge of contrition. Should you be so personal with non-beloveds? Well, it isn’t lost on me that endearing terms so casually bestowed cannot have much meaning for the bestowed upon but I do it for me.
I really do like our doorman, [...]

Give the storyteller a chance. He is telling you about the garage door having slipped its hinges and demolished three bicycles and a Volkswagen. You’re apt to lunge in instantly with your own garage-door story or, worse, the merits of Volkswagens versus Audis people slippy-slide so from subject to subject before the storyteller is [...]

I think unconditional love is what a mother feels for her baby, and not what you should feel for yourself. Author Margaret Halsey said in a Newsweek editorial: “The [false] idea is that inside every human being, however unprepossessing, there is a glorious, talented, and overwhelmingly attractive personality. Nonsense.
Inside each of us is a mess [...]