I can think of nothing more soul destroying in life than to persist in trying to do a thing you want desperately to do well, and to know that you are at the best second rate.
Women can accept the fact that a man is a rotter, a swindler, a drug taker, a confirmed liar, and a general swine, without batting an eyelash, and without its impairing their affection for the brute in the least. Women are wonderful realists.
To all those who lead monotonous lives in the hope that they may experience at second hand the delights and dangers of adventure. [author's dedication]
And so could you know it if you would only use the brains the good God has given you. Sometimes I really am tempted to believe that by inadvertence, He passed you by.
Ah, but life is like that! It does not permit you to arrange and order it as you will. It will not permit you to escape emotion, to live by the intellect and by reason! You cannot say, 'I will feel so much and no more.' Life, Mr. Welman, whatever else it is, is not reasonable. [Hercule Poirot]
To put it quite crudely ... the poor don't really know how the rich live, and the rich don't know how the poor live, and to find out is really enchanting to both of them.