It seemed to her sometimes that the most important thing about marriage was not a home or children or a remedy against sin, but simply there being always an eye to catch.
To be put down in this world, and given only eighty years to get to know it in, is like being let loose in the United States of America for the first time with a high-powered car and unlimited gasoline - but with a visa that is valid for only a week. It's agonizing, that's what it is.
Words were the only net to catch a mood, the only sure weapon against oblivion.
There was one bursting now, a delicate constellation of many-coloured stars which drifted down and lingered in the still air.... The final rocket went up, a really large one, a piece of reckless extravagance. Its sibilant uprush was impressive, dragonlike; it soared twice as high as any they had had before.... The sparks from the rocket came pouring down the sky in a slow golden cascade, vanishing one by one into a lake of darkness.
When there is a world scarcity of any commodity, whether it's food or free speech, then the whole world must go on rations in order that eventually the whole world may have it again in plenty.
O love's a simple word to sayWith nature aiding and abetting
there is practically no difference at all between a family and a nation, except the difference in size. A family is a nation seen through the wrong end of a telescope; a nation is a family seen through the right end of a telescope, and I don't believe it is possible to achieve a happy and successful family life, or a happy and successful national life, unless we bear this simple fact in mind and behave accordingly.
swans ... always look as though they'd just been reading their own fan-mail.
Constructive destruction is one of the most delightful employments in the world, and in civilized life the opportunities for it are only too rare.
A single person is a manageable entity, whom you can either make friends with or leave alone. But half of a married couple is not exactly a whole human being: if the marriage is successful it is something a little more than that; if unsuccessful, a little less. In either case, a fresh complication is added to the already intricate business of friendship: as Clem had once remarked, you might as well try to dance a tarantella with a Siamese twin.
I can't abide cats myself, but of course we have to have one in the kitchen to deal with the mice. I insisted on getting a black one, because anything else shows the dirt so in London.
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