But I couldn’t think it more hateful of them to have taken my fur tippet. Burglars never seem to realize one might feel the cold. How would they like it if I took away their wife’s shawl?
I am sometimes bored by people, but never by life.
To fall in love you have to be in the state of mind for it to take, like a disease.
Life itself, she thought, as she went upstairs to dress for dinner, was stranger than dreams and far, far more disordered.
An aristocracy in a republic is like a chicken whose head has been cut off: it may run about in a lively way, but in fact it is dead.
One’s emotions are intensified in Paris – one can be more happy and also more unhappy here than in any other place. But it is always a positive source of joy to live here, and there is nobody so miserable as a Parisian in exile from his town.
The great advantage of living in a large family is that early lesson of life’s essential unfairness.
The English lord marries for love, and is rather inclined to love where money is.
If one can’t be happy, one must be amused...
Spring came late, but when it came it was hand-in-hand with summer, and almost at once everything was baking and warm, and in the villages the people danced every night on concrete dancing floors under the plane trees...
Life is sometimes sad and often dull, but there are currants in the cake, and here is one of them.
It’s a funny thing that people are always ready to admit it if they’ve no talent for drawing or music, whereas everyone imagines that they themselves are capable of true love, which is a talent like any other, only far more rare.
I do love translating; it is the pure pleasure of writing without the misery of inventing.
Irish gardens beat all for horror. With 19 gardeners, Lord Talbot of Malahide has produced an affair exactly like a suburban golf course.
Sun, silence, and happiness.
A typical Irish dinner would be: cream flavored with lobster, cream with bits of veal in it, green peas and cream, cream cheese, cream flavored with strawberries.
Most people like reading about what they already know – there is even a public for yesterday’s weather.
Sisters are a shield against life’s cruel adversity.
Always remember, children, that marriage is a very intimate relationship. It’s not just sitting and chatting to a person; there are other things, you know.
One thing about tourists is that it is very easy to get away from them. Like ants they follow a trail and a few yards each side of that trail there are none.