One never feels such distaste for one's countrymen and countrywomen as when one meets them abroad.

Once you get to know your neighbors, you are no longer free, you are all tangled up, you have to stop and speak when you are out and you never feel safe when you are in.

So they left the subject and played croquet, which is a very good game for people who are annoyed with one another, giving many opportunities for venting rancor.

Still I sojourn here, alone and palely loitering, though the sedge is withered from the lake and no birds sing. For I sent the bath towel to the wash this morning, and omitted to put out another. I have no towel.

Once learnt, this business of cooking was to prove an ever growing burden. It scarcely bears thinking about, the time and labour that man and womankind has devoted to the preparation of dishes that are to melt and vanish in a moment like smoke or a dream, like a shadow, and as a post that hastes by, and the air closes behind them, afterwards no sign where they went is to be found.

The manuscript may go forth from the writer to return with a faithfulness passing the faithfulness of the boomerang or the homing pigeon.

Work is a dull thing; you cannot get away from that. The only agreeable existence is one of idleness, and that is not, unfortunately, always compatible with continuing to exist at all.