Status Updates From Un matrimonio per bene (Ita...

"As for Martha, it had occurred to her that this compulsive process of analysis and comparison was nothing but an excuse for doing nothing."

"Books. Words. There must surely be some patterns of words which would neatly and safely cage what she felt–isolate her emotions so that she could look at them from outside."

"There was nothing more paradoxical about her situation than that, while she insisted on being unique, individual, and altogether apart from any other person, she could be comforted in such matters only by remarks like 'Everybody feels this" or "It is natural to feel that."

Unfortunately nine-tenths of the time of any political leader must be spent not on defeating his opponents, but on manipulating the stupidities of his own side.

She felt, as usual, that she was entering a new world when she turned into the squalid little street she was looking for. Extreme poverty lay a hundred yards from wealth - as, indeed, it tends to do, but in this case it coincided with a physical ghetto. Five parallel streets, each about half a mile long, held the Coloured community. This was still the nineteenth century.

Well, good luck with the battle. All that’s wrong with him,’ she pronounced in her maidenly and demure way, ‘is that his property instinct is outraged.’

She immediately began chiding herself for her utter dishonesty. The instinct to comply, to please, seemed to her more and more unpleasant and false. Yet she had to reassure Douglas and kiss him before he left if she was not to feel guilty and lacking as a woman.