“His statement to himself should have been 'I possess this now,therefore I am happy' , instead of what it so Victorianly was: 'I cannot possess this forever, therefore I am sad.”

“I am Mrs. Poulteney. I have come to take up residence. Kindly inform your Master.""His Infinitude has been informed of your decease, ma'am. His angels have already sung a Jubilate in celebration of the event.""That is most proper and kind of Him." And the worthy lady, pluming and swelling, made to sweep into the imposing white hall she saw beyond the butler's head. But the man did not move aside. Instead, he rather impertinently jangled some keys he chanced to have in his hand."My man! Make way. I am she. Mrs. Poulteney of Lyme Regis.""Formerly of Lyme Regis, ma'am. And now of a much more tropical abode." With that, the brutal flunkey slammed the door in her face.”

“He stared to sea. "I gave up all ideas of practicing medicine. In spite of what I have just said about the wave and the water, in those years in France I am afraid I lived a selfish life. That is, I offered myself every pleasure. I traveled a great deal. I lost some money dabbling in the theatre, but I made much more dabbling on the Bourse. I gained a great many amusing friends, some of whom are now quite famous. But I was never very happy. I suppose I was fortunate. It took me only five years to discover what some rich people never discover — that we all have a certain capacity for happiness and unhappiness. And that the economic hazards of life do not seriously affect it.”

“They're beautiful. But sad.'Everything's sad if you make it so, I said.”

“I am infinitely strange to myself.”

“Time in itself, absolutely, does not exist; it is always relative to some observer or some object. Without a clock I say 'I do not know the time' . Without matter time itself is unknowable. Time is a function of matter; and matter therefore is the clock that makes infinity real.”

“My only certainty in life is that I shall one day die. I can be certain of nothing else in the future. But either we survive (and so far in human history a vast majority has always survived) and having survived when we might not have done so gives us what we call happiness; or we do not survive and do not know it.”