Private opinion creates public opinion. Public opinion overflows eventually into national behavior as things are arranged at present, can make or mar the world. That is why private opinion, and private behavior, and private conversation are so terrifyingly important.

Physical weather certainly is beyond our control. ... But human weather - the psychological climate of the world - is not beyond our control. The human race is its own rain and its own sun. It creates its own cyclones and anti-cyclones. The ridges of high pressure which we sometimes enjoy, the troughs of low pressure which we so often endure, are of our own making and nobody else's.

The importance of the ordinary citizen is very greatly underestimated - not so much by those in authority as by the ordinary citizen himself.

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.

In childhood the daylight always fails too soon - except when there are going to be fireworks.

The worst of gardening is that it's so full of metaphors one hardly knows where to begin.

It oughtn't to need a war to make us talk to each other in buses, and invent our own amusements in the evenings, and live simply, and eat sparingly, and recover the use of our legs, and get up early enough to see the sun rise.