“If they came sorrowing, and wanting sympathy in a complicated trouble like the present, then they would be felt as a shadow in all these houses of intimate acquaintances, not friends”

“Yet within a miles, Margaret knew of house after house, where she would for her own sake, and her mother for her Aunt Shaw's, would be welcomed, if they came to gladness, or even in peace of mind. If they came sorrowing, and wanting sympathy in a complicated trouble like the present, then they would be felt as a shadow in all these houses of intimate acquaintances.”

“A disquieting loneliness came into my life, but it induced no hunger for friends of longer acquaintance: they seemed now like a salt-free, sugarless diet.”

“Trouble is a sieve through which we sift our acquaintances. Those too big to pass through are our friends.”

“Stephen had just come from a class discussion in which several students believed that the right cup of herbal tea would save them from pain and sorrow. Well acquainted with pain and sorrow, Stephen did not contribute to the discussion. He merely crossed these idiots off his list of possible friends.”

“You didn’t understand what he was saying, until he kissed you. It was a kiss of such complicity, of such uncomplicated sympathy, that you felt for the first time not alone in your suffering.”