“With friends, one is well; but at home, one is better.”

“There is one thing better than making a new friend,and that is keeping a old one.”

“...sometimes it only makes one more lonely to know that somewhere else, one's friends and family are well.”

“What's most revolting is that one is really sad! No, it's better at home. Here at least one blames others for everything and excuses oneself.”

“Her family held strongly that for daughters to read in the daytime was to be idle. Well, if it was, thought Ingeborg lifting her head, that head that drooped so apologetically at home, with the defiance that distance encourages, then being idle was a blessed thing and the sooner one got away to where one could be it, uninterruptedly, the better.”

“A friend is more to be longed for than the light; I speak of a genuine one. And wonder not: for it were better for us that the sun should be extinguished, than that we should be deprived of friends; better to live in darkness, than to be without friends”