“But this I know: if all mankind were to take their troubles to market with the idea of exchanging them, anyone seeing what his neighbor's troubles were like would be glad to go home with his own.”

“Patience--"It's just that you needn't have gone to all the trouble." Matthew--"Trouble? What trouble is that, Patience?" His eyes dropped to her mouth. "Don't you see? You're no trouble to me." He lifted his gaze back to hers. "And even if you were, I would go to the ends of the earth to be troubled by you.”

“They were unlikely neighbors, and unlikely neighbors were the most likely to give each other trouble.”

“He [dad] always had some kind of trouble with his leg. He’d have bandages wrapped around it all the time but he’d never go and see a doctor. He’d rather have dropped dead than go to a doctor. He was terrified of them, like a lot of people his age were. And he’d never take a day off work. If he ever stayed at home feeling ill, it was time to call the undertaker.”

“Examine your heart often to see if it is such toward your neighbor as you would like his to be toward you were you in his place. This is the touchstone of true reason.”

“It seemed to him that anyone with any trouble at all eventually found his way to a city library, and the really troubled ones became regulars.”