children are an embarrassment to a business civilization. A business society needs children for the same reason that a nomadic or a pastoral society needs them - to perpetuate itself. Unfortunately, however, children are of no use to a business society until they have almost reached physical maturity.

being in the middle class is a feeling as well as an income level.

Living in England, provincial England, must be like being married to a stupid but exquisitely beautiful wife.

Father's snoring grows to sound increasingly like a vacuum cleaner in heat.

The people who are unprejudiced, but who ... feel it is so hopeless there is no use trying ... probably do just as much damage to the emotional atmosphere in which we are facing the problem as the fanatical Negrophobes.

Democracy makes many taxing demands on its practitioners, but suspension of the intelligence is not one of them.

the conversation whipped gaily around the table like rags in a high wind.