The wedding is the chief ceremony of the middle-class mythology, and it functions as the official entrée of the spouses to their middle-class status. This is the real meaning of saving up to get married. The young couple struggles to set up an image of comfortable life which they will be forced to live up to in the years that follow.

continuing sexual interest and perfect sexual adjustment between partners who have been together for thirty years is so difficult and rare that no one should feel guilty or inadequate for not having managed it.

The house wife is an unpaid employee in her husband's house in return for the security of being a permanent employee.

It is in our interests to let the police and their employers go on believing that the Underground is a conspiracy, because it increases their paranoia and their inability to deal with what is really happening. As long as they look for ringleaders and documents they will miss their mark, which is that proportion of every personality which belongs in the Underground.

Our business in life is not to get ahead of others, but to get ahead of ourselves-to breakour own records, to outstrip our yesterday by our today."Stewart B. Johnson"Men rule because women let them. Male misogyny is real enough, and it has dreadful consequences, but female misogyny is what keeps women out of power.

Gillard is as likeable as Rudd is charmless. She is self-deprecating; he is ludicrously vainglorious. She is a mistress of understatement; he is a ranter.

Evolution is what it is. The upper classes have always died out; it's one of the most charming things about them.