“Useless pursuits and conversations always about the same things absorb the better part of one's time, the better part of one's strength, and in the end there is left a life grovelling and curtailed, worthless and trivial, and there is no escaping or getting away from it—just as though one were in a madhouse or prison.”

“The better part of one's life consists of his friendships.”

“The art of reading is in great part that of acquiring a better understanding of life from one's encounter with it in a book. ”

“And it occurred to him that there were two parts to being a better person. One part was thinking about other people. The other part was not giving a toss what other people thought.”

“And the triviality faded from their faces, though it left something behind -- the knowledge that they could never be parted because their love was rooted in common things.”

“But whenever one meets modern thinkers (as one often does) progressing towards a madhouse, one always finds, on inquiry, that they have just had a splendid escape from another madhouse. Thus, hundreds of people become Socialists, not because they have tried Socialism and found it nice, but because they have tried Individualism and found it nasty.”