“Perhaps the rare and simple pleasure of being seen for what one is compensates for the misery of being it.”

“It is rarely that the pleasures of the imagination will compensate for the pain of sleeplessness”

“Perhaps its inevitable, perhaps one has to choose between being nothing at all and impersonating what one is.”

“The misery of being exploited by capitalists is nothing compared to the misery of not being exploited at all.”

“One rarely falls in love without being as much attracted to what is interestingly wrong with someone as what is objectively healthy.”

“The notion of the free play of the mind upon all subjects being a pleasure in itself, being an object of desire, being an essential provider of elements without which a nation's spirit, whatever compensations it may have for them, must, in the long run, die of inanition, hardly enters into an Englishman's thoughts.”

“She wanted something else, something different, something more. Passion and romance, perhaps, or maybe quiet conversations in candlelit rooms, or perhaps something as simple as not being second.”

“I suppose being right will have to compensate me for being poor—the story of my life, I fear.”

“Each contact with a human being is so rare, so precious, one should preserve it.”

“The pleasures that give most joy are the ones that most rarely come.”