Remember the botched brothel-visit in L’Education sentimentale and remember its lesson. Do not participate: happiness lies in the imagination, not the act. Pleasure is found first in anticipation, later in memory.

[Flaubert] didn’t just hate the railway as such; he hated the way it flattered people with the illusion of progress. What was the point of scientific advance without moral advance? The railway would merely permit more people to move about, meet and be stupid together.

Had my life increased, or merely added to itself? There had been addition and subtraction in my life, but how much multiplication?

What happiness is there in just the memory of happiness?

The spring of 1930 marks the end of a period of grave concern...American business is steadily coming back to a normal level of prosperity.

Mystification is simple; clarity is the hardest thing of all.

Life isn't just addition and subtraction. There's also the accumulation, the multiplication, of loss, of failure.