Because happiness alone is good for the body; whereas sorrow develops the strength of the mind. - Marcel Proust

The fixity of a habit is generally in direct proportion to its absurdity.

We fall in love for a smile, a glance, a bare shoulder. That is enough; then, in the long hours of hope or sorrow, we fabricate a person, we compose a character. And when later on we see much of the beloved person, we can no longer, whatever the cruel reality that confronts us, strip off that good character, that nature of a woman who loves us, from the person who bestows that glance, bares that shoulder, than we can when she has grown old eliminate her youthful face from a person whom we have known since her girlhood.

Reading is that fruitful miracle of a communication in the midst of solitude.