“Thus Arm in Arm with thee I dare defy my century into the lists.”

The joke loses everything when the joker laughs himself.

The mind is the eyesight of the soul.

I have enjoyed the happiness of the world; I have loved.

What shall he fear that does not fear death.

Every true genius is bound to be naive.

An honest man you may form of windle-straws, but to make a rogue you must have grist.

Satisfied if they themselves can escape from the hard labour of thought, they willingly abandon to others the guardianship of their thoughts.

Freedom can occur only through education.

Aesthetic matters are fundamental for the harmonious development of both society and the individual.

It is not the mere station of life that stamps the value on us, but the manner in which we act our part.

Fate hath no voice but the heart’s impulse.

Far must thy researches go Wouldst thou learn the world to know; Thou must tempt the dark abyss Wouldst thou prove what Being is; Naught but firmness gains the prize, Naught but fullness makes us wise, Buried deep truth e’er lies.

On the mountains there is freedom! The world is perfect everywhere, Save where man comes with his torment.

He who has done his best for his own time has lived for all times.

Virtue is no empty echo.

Wine invents nothing; it only tattles.

The century of people helplessly seeing others, who were close to them, disappear over the horizon.

Boxing is changing and training methods are slowly being dragged into the 21st century.

Throughout the centuries we have projected on to the wolf the qualities we most despise and fear in ourselves.

If you can’t laugh at yourself, you may be missing the colossal joke of the century.

Totalitarianism is feudalism in the twelfth century sense of the word.

The woods were peopled by the mysterious good folk. The Lords and Ladies of the last century walked with me along the overgrown paths, and picked the old fashioned flowers among the box and rose hedges of the garden.

The proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem underscores how stable mathematics is through the centuries – how mathematics is one of humanity’s long continuous conversations with itself.

The life story of the five main characters and the secondary characters around them allows Jonathan Franzen to present the full impetus and extent of the world picture of the West at the end of the 20th century.