“Everyone contributes a word, a sentence, an image, but in the end it all makes sense: the happiness of one becomes the joy of all.”

“I know all those words, but that sentence makes no sense to me.”

“It’s fascinating. You know all these words, and they’re all English, but when you string them together into sentences, they just don’t make any sense.”

“We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal. Each man the image of every other; then all are happy, for there are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against.”

“Clearly,” I said, “we should choose not to have good sense, if that good sense contributes to our misery.” Everyone agreed with me, and yet I found no one who wanted to accept the bargain of becoming ignorant in order to become content. From this I concluded that though we greatly value happiness, we place even greater value on reason.But yet, upon reflection, it seems that to prefer reason to happiness is to be quite insane.”

“... a book is not made of sentences laid end to end, but of sentences built, if an image helps, into arcades or domes.”