Women, as usual, were expected to behave better than men, and inevitably attracted criticism for doing things that men were licensed to do with impunity.
We should all busy ourselves in being who we are, although many of us do not and spend so much time and energy being something else. We try to be what others want us to be, or what we ourselves want t...
We do not talk about wise men or wise ladies any more, she reflected; their place had been taken, it seemed, by all sorts of shallow people—actors and the like—who were only too ready to pronounce on...
There are indeed ducks in Blackford Pond. On it, muttered Isabel. What? On the pond. There are ducks on the pond. There are fish in it. Even as she spoke, Isabel had no idea why she was being so pedan...
The world was an imperfect place--as the events of the last few days had demonstrated--but within that vale of tears there were many sites and times of quietude and contentment, and this place and thi...
The whole culture of work had become so intrusive and demanding that people had to do it. And the result was that they were left with little time for simply living their lives, for going for a walk, f...
That was the way the world was; it was composed of a few almost perfect people (ourselves); then there were a good many people who generally did their best but were not all that perfect (our friends a...
That is the problem with governments these days. They want to do things all the time; they are always very busy thinking of what things they can do next. That is not what people want. People want to b...
Some people mocked you if you said that you joined others when your time came. Well, they could laugh, those clever people, but we surely had to hope, and a life without hope of any sort was no life:...
So plans were useful only in revealing what people wished for. If you wanted to know what they would actually do, then the only way of finding out was by watching them and seeing what they did. Then y...
She really is a huge fan. Ulf closed his eyes. He saw the professor being pursued by a group of his fans, the huge ones struggling to keep up with the thinner, more lithe fans, dropping exhausted and...
She had muttered the words without realising, as unintentionally as she had said co-director. It was a worrying prospect: if one started to say what one was thinking, the results could be very embarra...
It's really rather easy to write eighth-century Chinese poetry, said Angus Lordie. In English, of course. It requires little effort, I find.
It would be wonderful, she thought, to write a book which would help other people.
It was inconsiderate not to have a gardener if, like Dr Ranta, you were in a well-paid white-collar job. It was a social duty to employ domestic staff, who were readily available and desperate for wor...
It was curious how some people had a highly developed sense of guilt, she thought, while others had none.
. . for most of us there was a central, unavoidable problem— the world was populated by people who were unlike us . That explained so many wars— particularly religious ones; that explained persecution...