“We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them.”

“We are allowed to do that, are we not Mabel? To invent our own endings and choose joy over sorrow?”

“Participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world. We cannot cure the world of sorrows, but we can choose to live in joy.”

“I sometimes think that perhaps our minds are too weak to grasp joy or sorrow except in small things...In the big things joy and sorrow are just alike - overwhelming. At least, we only get them bit by bit, in tiny flashes - in waves - that our minds can't stand for very long. p 199”

“We could all do with a bit more joy in our lives couldn't we? The wonderful thing is that when we start spreading joy, we begin to actually experience more joy in our lives too!”

“Forgetting! It is a form of suicide, a renunciation of the only good the we truly and ineluctably possess: the past. For if joys alone were forgotten, perhaps oblivion would be justly desired. But we are proud and jealous of our sorrows, we love them, we want to remember them. It is they that comprise the crown of life.”