How close beneath the surface, even in the happiest family, is the chronic grievance! I sometimes think that tinderboxes are inert and powder kegs mere talcum compared to the explosive possibilities in the most commoplace domestic situation.

The real nature of an ethic is that it does not become an ethic unless and until it goes into action.

Reality is above all else a variable, and nobody is qualified to say that he or she knows exactly what it is. As a matter of fact, with a firm enough commitment, you can sometimes create a reality which did not exist before.

Englishwomen's shoes look as if they had been made by someone who had often heard shoes described, but had never seen any.

The great disadvantage of being in a rat race is that it is humiliating. The competitors in a rat race are by definition rodents.

The stress laid on upward social mobility in the United States has tended to obscure the fact that there can be more than one kind of mobility and more than one direction in which it can go. There can be ethical mobility as well as financial, and it can go down as well as up.

... the English think of an opinion as something which a decent person, if he has the misfortune to have one, does all he can to hide.