Status Updates From El insoportable Bassington

“The daily anxiety about Comus and his extravagant ways and intractable disposition had been gradually lulled by the prospect of his making an advantageous marriage, which would have transformed him from a ne’er-do-well and adventurer into a wealthy idler.  He might even have been moulded, by the resourceful influence of an ambitious wife, into a man with some definite purpose in life.”

“Comus had relied almost exclusively on his physical attraction and the fitful drollery of his wit and high spirits, and these graces had gone far to make him seem a very desirable and rather lovable thing in Elaine’s eyes…the more that she felt that she liked him the more she was irritated by his lack of consideration for her.”

“Here was one who had held much that was priceless in the hollow of his hand and lost it all, and he was happy and absorbed and well-content with the little wayside corner of the world into which he had crept.  And Elaine, who held so many desirable things in the hollow of her hand, could not make up her mind to be even moderately happy.”

“ The art of public life consists to a great extent of knowing exactly where to stop and going a bit further.”

“Unfortunately, though you may bring brilliant talkers into your home, you cannot always make them talk brilliantly, or even talk at all; what is worse you cannot restrict the output of those starling-voiced dullards who seem to have, on all subjects, so much to say that was well worth leaving unsaid.”