The best thing for being sad ... is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you… - T. H. White

The best thing for being sad ... is to learn something.

"The best thing for being sad," replied Merlyn, "is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails."

"The best cure for grief is learning".

The best thing for being sad is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails.

Perhaps man was neither good nor bad, was only a machine in an insensate universe — his courage no more than a reflex to danger, like the automatic jump at the pin-prick. Perhaps there were no virtues, unless jumping at pin-pricks was a virtue, and humanity only a mechanical donkey led on by the iron carrot of love, through the pointless treadmill of reproduction.

When she (Maria) had come abreast of the little island of Mistress Masham's Repose, she began to feel piratical. Swouns and Slids, she said to herself, but you could slap her vitals if she did not careen there, and perhaps dig up some buried treasure while about it.

...it seems, in tragedy, that innocence is not enough.