“It shows considerable wisdom to know what you want in life and then to direct all your energies towards getting it.”

“He didn't want her; he wanted me. Well, you know how it is."Dalgliesh did know. This, after all, was the commonest, the most banal of personal tragedies. You loved someone. They didn't love you. Worse still, in defiance of their own best interests and to the destruction of your peace, they loved another. What would half the world's poets and novelists do without this universal tragicomedy?”

“It's easy to get a reputation for wisdom. It's only necessary to live long, speak little and do less.”

“The secret of contentment is never to allow yourself to want anything which reason tells you you haven't a chance of getting.”

“We have all sinned, Mr. Darcy, and we cannot look for mercy without showing it in our lives.”

“Perhaps it's only when people are dead that we can safely show how much we cared about them. We know that it's too late then for them to do anything about it.”

“But perhaps what mattered at eighty was habit, the body no longer interested in sex, the mind no longer interested in speculation, the smaller things in life mattering more than the large and, in the end, the slow realization that nothing really mattered at all.”