Parents are untamed, excessive, potentially troublesome creatures; charming to be with for a time, in the main they must lead their own lives, independent and self-employed, with companions of their own age and selection.

Giving is not at all interesting; but receiving is, there is no doubt about it, delightful.

You should always believe what you read in the newspapers, for that makes them more interesting.

A hot bath! How exquisite a vespertine pleasure, how luxurious, fervid and flagrant a consolation for the rigours, the austerities, the renunciations of the day.

It wasn't really touching to be young; it was touching not to be young, because you had less of life left. Touching to be thirty; more touching to be forty; tragic to be fifty; and heartbreaking to be sixty. As to seventy, as to eighty, one would feel as one did during the last dance of a ball, tired but fey in the paling dawn, desperately making the most of each bar of music before one went home to bed.

One should, I think, always give children money, for they will spend it for themselves far more profitably than we can ever spend it for them.

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.