What humbugs we are, who pretend to live for beauty, and never see the dawn!

Happiness is a wine of the rarest vintage, and seems insipid to a vulgar taste.

How can they say my life is not a success? Have I not for more than sixty years got enough to eat and escaped being eaten?

There are few sorrows in which a good income is of no avail.

The indefatigable pursuit of an unattainable perfection -even though nothing more than the pounding of an old piano -is what alone gives a meaning to our life on this unavailing star.

So, I never lose a sense of the whimsical and perilous charm of daily life, with its meetings and words and accidents.

We grow with years more fragile in body, but morally stutter, and can throw off the chill of a bad conscience almost at once.