Finding the meaning of life is easy. Simply get a dictionary, go to the 'L' section, and find the word 'life.'

Romantic literature is in effect imaginative lying.

Unless one is wealthy there is no use in being a charming fellow. Romance is the privilege of the rich, not the profession of the unemployed. The poor should be practical and prosaic. It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating.

Always! That is the dreadful word ... it is a meaningless word, too.

He is really not so ugly after all, provided, of course, that one shuts one's eyes, and does not look at him.

And when wind and winter harden All the loveless land, It will whisper of the garden, You will understand.

Well, I don't like your clothes. You look perfectly ridiculous in them. Why on earth don't you go up and change? It's perfectly childish to be in mourning for a man who is actually staying a whole week with you in your house as a guest. I call it grotesque.