Man is potentially a son, and woman is potentially a mother; woman depends on the dependence of man. The spinster, if pathetic at all, is pathetic because she has no one to look after, not because there is no one to look after her. Bear in mind that the conventional spinster keeps a canaary as a substitute for a husband.

The sun was like a word written between the sea and the sky, a word that was swallowed up by the sea before any man had time to read it.

There are some people who can never see a little cloud of fantasy float across the horizon of their dreams without building a heavy castle in the air upon it, and bringing it to earth.

Family jokes, though rightly cursed by strangers, are the bond that keeps most families alive.

The Law likes to be argued with. Take away words and where is the Law? Silence always annoys it.

always there is a sort of dream of air between you and the hills of California, a veil of unreality in the intervening air. It gives the hills the bloom that peaches have, or grapes in the dew.

Imagination seems to be a glory and a misery, a blessing and a curse. Adam, to his sorrow, lacked it. Eve, to her sorrow, possessed it. Had both been blessed - or cursed - with it, there would have been much keener competition for the apple.