“I think play must have been invented so we wouldn't go mad thinking about certain things.”

“People from a planet without flowers would think we must be mad with joy the whole time to have such things about us.”

“I’d have to join eventually if I had to think about it, not like we were going to be forever. I mean, who would dare think that, forever? Some idiot girl who wouldn’t know how things played out.”

“Mrs. Cadwallader said, privately, 'You will certainly go mad in that house alone, my dear. You will see visions. We have all got to exert ourselves a little to keep sane, and call things by the same names as other people call them by. To be sure, for younger sons and women who have no money, it is a sort of provision to go mad: they are taken care of then. But you must not run into that. I daresay you are a little bored here with our good dowager; but think what a bore you might become yourself to your fellow-creatures if you were always playing tragedy queen and taking things sublimely. Sitting alone in that library at Lowick you may fancy yourself ruling the weather; you must get a few people round you who wouldn't believe you if you told them. That is a good lowering medicine.”

“I often think it would be such luxury to go mad, and not have to worry about anything. Others would have to worry for me, about me.”

“I can never be perfectly certain whether Helen was got with child by Leonard Bast or by his fatal forgotten umbrella. All things considered, I think it must have been the umbrella.”