The civilized are those who get more out of life than the uncivilized, and for this we are not likely to be forgiven.

In America every woman has her set of girl-friends; some are cousins, the rest are gained at school. These form a permanent committee who sit on each other's affairs, who come out together, marry and divorce together, and who end as those groups of bustling, heartless well-informed club-women who govern society. Against them the Couple of Ehepaar is helpless and Man in their eyes but a biological interlude.

Marriage is the permanent conversation between two people who talk over everything and everyone until death breaks the record.

All charming people have something to conceal, usually their total dependence on the appreciation of others.

In a perfect union the man and woman are like a strung bow. Who is to say whether the string bends the bow, or the bow tightens the string?

No one over thirty-five is worth meeting who has not something to teach us, something more than we could learn for ourselves, from a book.

Approaching forty, I had a singular dream in which I almost grasped the meaning and understood the nature of what it is that wastes in wasted time.