François Lelord

He looked at Hector's list and told him that, thanks to a lot of studies and calculations, they'd shown that if you compared yourself to others and didn't find yourself wanting, if you had no money or health problems, if you had friends, a close-knit family, a job you liked, if you were religious and practised your religion, if you felt useful, if you went for a little stroll from time to time, and all of this in a country that was run by not very bad people, where you were taken care of when things went wrong, your chances of bring happy were greatly increased.

[P]erhaps this was how you knew a good deed was truly good: you didn't necessarily feel better afterwards.

He had fallen in love with her emotions, and that was a very profound feeling indeed.

It's one thing thinking something and another thing knowing it.