Riches ... don't consist in having things, but in not having to do something you don't want to do. ... Riches is being able to thumb your nose.

After three days without one, the desire to read a newspaper vanished. And really, one was happier without.

Fasting was good for the imagination but bad for logic.

It's an odd thing but when you tell someone the true facts of a mythical tale they are indignant not with the teller but with you. They don't want to have their ideas upset. It rouses some vague uneasiness in them, I think, and they resent it. So they reject it and refuse to think about it. If they were merely indifferent it would be natural and understandable. But it is much stronger than that, much more positive. They are annoyed. Very odd, isn't it.

Nothing great ever came out of common sense.

That was the way with grief: it left you alone for months together until you thought that you were cured, and then without warning it blotted out the sunlight.

Riches ... don't consist in having things, but in not having to do something you don't want to do. ... Riches is being able to thumb your nose.