My mother protected me from the world and my father threatened me with it.

The British do not expect happiness. I had the impression, all the time that I lived there, that they do not want to be happy; they want to be right.

It's written into the Constitution that you're allowed to pursue happiness. In England it would be considered a frivolous objective.

However low a man sinks he never reaches the level of the police.

The very purpose of existence is to reconcile the glowing opinion we hold of ourselves with the appalling things that other people think about us.

Our clothes are too much a part of us for most of us ever to be entirely indifferent to their condition: it is as though the fabric were indeed a natural extension of the body, or even of the soul.

As we all know from witnessing the consuming jealousy of husbands who are never faithful, people do not confine themselves to the emotions to which they are entitled.