“Beauty is nothing other than the promise of happiness.”

“Beauty is the promise of happiness. And the only happiness is action....Fate is the path of least action.”

“all the city was playing with this sound out there in the blue summer dark, throwing it up and calling it back, promising that, in a little while, life would be beautiful as a story, promising happiness, and by that promise giving it”

“But nothing in life was set in stone and nothing in life is promised us. Not happiness, not joy, not love. Everything was variable and mutable and inconstant.”

“After all the world is indeed beautiful and if we were any other creature than man we might be continuously happy in it.”

“Why did people assume that the beautiful among them needed nothing but their beauty to bring them happiness? That behind the beauty there was nothing but an empty shell, insensitive shell?”