Fixed customs must be surrendered, lateness must become punctuality, cigarette ends must not burn the mantelpiece, one misses one's own China tea. Th… - E. V. Lucas

As a child I had no doubts; but now? Take, for instance, telling the truth. I was brought up to believe that one should do that, and I knew a lie a mile off. But now I see that mendacity, or at any rate the suppression of one's real feelings and opinions, is the cement that binds society together.

How can Nancy know her own mind when she has not got one? She is a dear, sweet girl, and I was devoted to her—am devoted to her—but she has no mind. It was I who was to give her that.

I wonder that affectionate parents can ever give their consent to their children's marriage at all. I can understand a father having no particular objection to his son's wife, and a mother to her daughter's husband; but how a father can ever even tolerate his daughter's husband or a mother the wife of her son, that is beyond my imagination.