An Unsuitable Job for a Woman

"My mother used to say, 'Don't marry for money, but marry where money is! ' There's no harm in looking for money as long as there's kindness as well."

"It isn't what you suspect, it's what you can prove that counts."

"Are you sorry about Isabelle leaving?"

"I am rather. Beauty is intellectually confusing; it sabotages common sense. I could never quite accept that Isabelle was what she is: a generous, indolent, over-affectionate and stupid young woman. I thought that any woman as beautiful as she must have an instinct about life, access to some secret wisdom which is beyond cleverness. Every time she opened that delicious mouth I was expecting her to illumine life. I think I could have spent all my life just looking at her and waiting for the oracle. And all she could talk about was clothes."

"If there's any sort of existence after death we shall all know it soon enough. If there isn't, we shan't exist to complain that we've been cheated."

"Hunch is a good servant but a poor master."

There were moments, usually on a sunny Easter morning, when she wished that she could with sincerity call herself a Christian; but for the rest of the year she knew herself to be what she was - incurably agnostic but prone to unpredictable relapses into faith.

"But what is the use of making the world more beautiful if the people who live in it can't love one another?"