Why did you look at the sunset?'Philip answered with his mouth full:Because I was happy.

It might be that to surrender to happiness was to accept defeat, but it was a defeat better than many victories.

I've been quite happy. Look, here are my proofs. Remember that I am indifferent to discomforts which would harass other folk. What do the circumstances of life matter if your dreams make you lord paramount of time and space?

Everything passed, and what trace of its passage remained? It seemed to Kitty that they were all, the human race, like the drops of water in that river and they flowed on, each so close to the other and yet so far apart, a nameless flood, to the sea. When all things lasted so short a time and nothing mattered very much, it seemed pitiful that men, attaching an absurd importance to trivial objects, should make themselves and one another so unhappy.

You tend to close your eyes to truth, beauty and goodness because they give no scope to your sense of the ridiculous.