“Life is loneliness, broken only by the gods taunting us with friendship and the odd bonk”

“I dislike talk of the Gods, who taunt us with their promises, and whose disappointments we must always accept.”

“… habits in writing as in life are only useful if they are broken as soon as they cease to be advantageous.”

“Friendship needs no words — it is solitude delivered from the anguish of loneliness.”

“Loneliness, when accepted, becomes a gift that will lead us to find a purpose in life.”

“Kipps was unprepared for the unpleasant truth; that the path of social advancement is and must be strewn with broken friendships.”

“As seen in my loneliness, there was this difference between the Bible and the newspapers. The one reminded one that, apart from God, my life was but a bubble of air, and it bade me remember my Creator; the other fostered arrogance and loneliness.”

“Today I know this: when it comes time to take stock, the most painful wound is that of broken friendships; and there is nothing more foolish than to sacrifice a friendship to politics.”

“But friendship is precious, not only in the shade, but in the sunshine of life, and thanks to a benevolent arrangement the greater part of life is sunshine.”

“I think that real friendship always makes us feel such sweet gratitude, because the world almost always seems like a very hard desert, and the flowers that grow there seem to grow against such high odds.”