“There's nothing like active employment, I suppose, to console the afflicted.”

“I imagine there must be only a very, very few men in the world, that I should like to marry; and of those few, it is ten to one I may never be acquainted with one; or if I should, it is twenty to o...”

“Then, you must fall each into your proper place. You'll do your business, and she, if she's worthy of you, will do hers; but it's your business to please yourself, and hers to please you.”

“how shall I get through the months or years of my future life, in company with that man -- my greatest enemy -- for none could injure me as he has done? Oh! when I think how fondly, how foolishly I...”

“But where hope rises, fear must lurk behind.”

“I possess the faculty of enjoying the company of those I - of my friends as well in silence as in conversation.”

“The more pleasure a universe can yield, other things being equal, the more beneficent and generous is its general nature; the more pains its constitution involves, the darker and more malign its to...”

“Small truths have greater power than big lies.”

“Essentially there are two actions in life: Performance and excuses. Make a decision as to which he will accept from yourself.”

“Lucian's father had warned him to fear idle men. Without the pride gained from a good day's work, they were left to their vices and the doubts that crowded their head. Their hatred. Their envy.”

“She was wearing her fuzzy pink hat and she was happy, which was so obnoxious. She'd become one of those people who waltzed through life without so much as a split end, and I was still one of those ...”

“We may be just a drop in the ocean, but even the ocean envies the depth of our love.”

“In order that all men may be taught to speak truth, it is necessary that all likewise should learn to hear it.”

“In the guise of frankness many people ruin their world by saying unpleasant things to friends and family. The bad words make them a bad world.”

“The barber's assistant asks if I am a Swede. An American? Not that either. A Russian? Well, then, what are you? I love to answer such nationalistically tinted questions with a steely silence, and t...”