Unhappiness of the kind that is recognized and examined and brooded over is a spiritual luxury. - Robertson Davies

She had an ability, invaluable in a weak person, to persuade herself that whatever was inevitable had her full approval, and was in some measure her own doing.

The reclusive man who marries the gregarious woman, the timid woman who marries the courageous man, the idealist who marries the realist — we can all see these unions: the marriages in which tenderness meets loyalty, where generosity sweetens moroseness, where a sense of beauty eases some aridity of the spirit, are not so easy for outsiders to recognize; the parties themselves may not be fully aware of such elements in a good match.

..but when one human creature dies a whole world of hope and memory and feeling dies with him. To be robbed of the dignity of a natural death is a terrible deprivation.