If your lot makes you cry and be wretched, get rid of it and take another; strike out for yourself; don't listen to the shriek of your relations...don't be afraid of public opinion in the shape of the neighbours in the next house, when all the world is before you new and shining, and everything is possible, if you will only be energetic and independent and seize opportunity by the scruff of the neck.

Guests can be, and often are, delightful, but they should never be allowed to get the upper hand.

Who can begin conventional amiability the first thing in the morning?

Love isn't decent. Love is glorious and shameless.

And the summer seems as though it would dream on for ever.

... Why, it would really be being unselfish to go away and be happy for a little, because we would come back so much nicer.

... without it (love), without, anyhow, the capacity for it, people didn't seem to be much good. Dry as old bones, cold as stones, they seemed to become, when love was done; inhuman, indifferent, self-absorbed, numb.