One of the disadvantages of almost universal education was the fact that all kinds of persons acquired a familiarity with one's favorite writers. It ….

On the whole, Flora liked it better when they were silent, though it did rather give her the feeling that she was acting in one of the less cheerful ….

Well, when I am fifty-three or so I would like to write a novel as good as Persuasion but with a modern setting, of course. For the next thirty years….

Well,' said Mrs Smiling, 'it sounds an appalling place, but in a different way from all the others. I mean, it does sound interesting and appalling, ….

The education bestowed on Flora Poste by her parents had been expensive, athletic and prolonged; and when they died within a few weeks of one another….

And when April like an over-lustful lover leaped upon the lush flanks of the Downs there would be yet another child in the wretched hut down on Nettl….

Like all really strong-minded women, on whom everybody flops, she adored being bossed about. It was so restful..

There are some things (like first love and one’s first reviews) at which a woman in her middle years does not care to look too closely..

Women are all alike - aye fussin' over their fal-lals and bedazin' a man's eyes, when all they really want is man's blood and his heart out of his bo….

There have always been Starkadders at Cold Comfort Farm.

Surely she had endured enough for one evening without having to listen to intelligent conversation?.

A straight nose is a great help if one wishes to look serious'..

She liked Victorian novels. They were the only kind of novel you could read while eating an apple..

Curious how Love destroys every vestige of that politeness which the human race, in its years of evolution, has so painfully acquired..

That would be delightful,' agreed Flora, thinking how nasty and boring it would be..

Dawn crept over the Downs like a sinister white animal, followed by the snarling cries of a wind eating its way between the black boughs of the thorn….

You have the most revolting Florence Nightingale complex,' said Mrs. Smiling. It is not that at all, and well you know it. On the whole, I dislike my….

Flora sighed. It was curious that persons who lived what the novelists called a rich emotional life always seemed to be a bit slow on the uptake..

The life of a journalist is poor, nasty, brutish, and short. So is his style.

Happiness can never hope to command so much interest as distress..

He was, she reflected, almost rudely like a tortoise; and she was glad her friend kept none as pets or they might have suspected mockery..