Light-heartedness always made Soames suspicious - there was generally some reason for it.

It isnot good enough tospend time and ink indescribing the penultimate sensations and physical movements of people getting into a state of rut, we all know them so well.

We are all familiar with the argument: Make war dreadful enough, and there will be no war. And we none of us believe it.

Once admit that we have the right to inflict unnecessary suffering and you destroy the very basis of human society.

From behind a wooden crate we saw a long black-muzzled nose poking round at us. We took him out-soft, wobbly, tearful; set him down on his four, as yet not quite simultaneous legs, and regarded him. He wandered a little round our legs, neither wagging his tail nor licking at our hands; then he looked up, and my companion said: "He's an angel!"

the biggest tragedy of life is the utter impossibility to change what you have done

Essential characteristics of a gentleman: The will to put himself in the place of others; the horror of forcing others into positions from which he would himself recoil; and the power to do what seems to him to be right without considering what others may say or think.