pretense is the oil that lubricates society.

Patience and endurance were not virtues in a woman; they were necessities, forced on her. Perhaps some day things would change and women would renounce them. They would rise up and say: 'We are not patient. We will endure no more.' Then what would happen to the world?

I suppose that we are only young, Chris, so long as we can forget. After that we merely remember!

All houses in which men have lived and suffered and died are haunted houses.

... Washington was not only an important capital. It was a city of fear. Below that glittering and delightful surface there is another story, that of underpaid Government clerks, men and women holding desperately to work that some political pull may at any moment take from them. A city of men in office and clutching that office, and a city of struggle which the country never suspects.

when knowledge comes in at the door, fear and superstition fly out of the window.

To the bottle! In infancy, the milk bottle; in our prime, the wine bottle; in our dotage, the pill bottle.