The past is rich in lessons from which we would greatly profit except that the present is always so full of Special Circumstances.

A first-rate marriage is like a first-rate hotel: expensive, but worth it.

The past is strapped to our backs. We do not have to see it; we can always feel it.

In life, as in restaurants, we swallow a lot of indigestible stuff just because it comes with the dinner.

We always prefer war on our own terms to peace on someone else's.

We sometimes feel that we have been really understood, but it was always long ago, by someone now dead.

No matter how many Christmas presents you give your child, there's always that terrible moment when he's opened the very last one. That's when he expects you to say, 'Oh yes, I almost forgot,' and take him out and show him the pony.