“If we should deal out justice only, in this world, who would escape? No, it is better to be generous, and in the end more profitable, for it gains gratitude for us, and love.”

“What is it which makes a man and a woman know that they, of all other men and women in the world, belong to each other? Is it no more than chance and meeting? no more than being alive together in the world at the same time? Is it only a curve of the throat, a line of the chin, the way the eyes are set, a way of speaking? Or is it something deeper and stranger, something beyond meeting, something beyond chance and fortune? Are there others, in other times of the world, whom we should have loved, who would have loved us? Is there, perhaps, one soul among all others--among all who have lived, the endless generations, from world's end to world's end--who must love us or die? And whom we must love, in turn--whom we must seek all our lives long--headlong and homesick--until the end?”

“In ordinary life we hardly realize that we receive a great deal more than we give, and that it is only with gratitude that life becomes rich.”

“It’s okay to struggle to find our place in this world and the person who will take us for who and what we are. Sometimes we dress ourselves in layers that only get peeled away in the end, to leave us as we should be.”

“Perhaps you forgave him too much, but who among us would not wish to be so generously loved and generously forgiven?”

“And, in keeping with the original Milesian Tales which had happy endings, I would conclude the episode of the lovely Atalanta Chan, who, having sold her virginity for one million dollars, ended up still a virgin.This fact did not escape the astute mind of the financial wizard, Butes, who pointed out to the lovely girl that since her flower had already been fully paid for & since it was he who had arranged the deal, he should be the one to enjoy any benefit that remained.[MMT]”