‘By experience. Are not the nine-tenths of every human being precisely like the nine-tenths of the next? The difficulties of life are connected with that tenth which is not alike in any two.’
‘Your experience must have been very great.’
‘It has been just great enough to teach me to recognise the point at which no experience is of any use whatever.’
‘And what is that point?’
‘Generally the sweetest in life, and the most dangerous.’
‘You speak in riddles, Herr Rex.’
‘One man’s life is another man’s riddle, and if he succeeds in guessing its solution he cries out that it is a sham and was not worth guessing at all.’
‘I believe you are a man-hater,’ said Greif.
‘Why should I be? The world gives me all I ask of it, and if that is not much the fault lies in my scanty imagination. The world is a flower-garden. If you like the flowers, pluck them. Happiness consists in knowing what we want, or in imagining that we want something. To take it is an easy matter.’
‘Then everybody ought to be happy.’