“To be stupid, and selfish, and to have good health are the three requirements for happiness - though if stupidity is lacking, the others are useless.”

“To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.”

“What was the point of scientific advance without moral advance? The railway would merely permit more people to move about, meet and be stupid together”

“The despairing are always being urged to abstain from selfishness, to think of others first. This seems unfair. Why load them with responsibility for the welfare of others, when their own already weighs them down?”

“[Flaubert] didn’t just hate the railway as such; he hated the way it flattered people with the illusion of progress. What was the point of scientific advance without moral advance? The railway would merely permit more people to move about, meet and be stupid together.”

“And that’s a life, isn’t it? Some achievements and some disappointments. It’s been interesting to me, though I wouldn’t complain or be amazed if others found it less so. Maybe, in a way, Adrian knew what he was doing. Not that I would have missed my own life for anything, you understand.”

“You would think, wouldn’t you, that if you were the childof a happy marriage, then you ought to have a better thanaverage marriage yourself – either through some geneticinheritance or because you’d learnt from example? But itdoesn’t seem to work like that. So perhaps you need theopposite example – to see mistakes in order not to makethem yourself. Except this would mean that the best way forparents to ensure their children have happy marriageswould be to have unhappy ones themselves. So what’s theanswer?”