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

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

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..

There have always been Starkadders at Cold Comfort Farm.

Here was an occasion, she thought, for indulging in that deliberate rudeness which only persons with habitually good manners have the right to commit..

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….

I do not object to the phenomena, but I do object to the parrot..

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

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

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

Nature is all very well in her place, but she must not be allowed to make things untidy..

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

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

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….

By god, DH Lawrence was right when he said there must be a dumb, dark, dull, bitter belly-tension between a man and a woman, and how else could this ….

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….

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….

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

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..

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 ….

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….