“Innocence might be its own reward, but when it boardered on naivete, if not stupidity, it was unforgivable.”

“Why did she want to stay in England? Because the history she was interested in had happened here, and buried deep beneath her analytical mind was a tumbled heap of Englishness in all its glory, or kings and queens, of Runnymede and Shakespeare's London, of hansom cabs and Sherlock Holmes and Watson rattling off into the fog with cries of 'The game's afoot,' of civil wars bestrewing the green land with blood, of spinning jennies and spotted pigs and Churchill and his country standing small and alone against the might of Nazi Germany. It was a mystery to her how this benighted land had produced so many great men and women, and ruled a quarter of the world and spread its language and law and democracy across the planet.”

“Sense is apt to fly out of the window when a girl falls in love.”

“When we are young, we make gods and goddesses of one another, then we soon come to realize that we are all merely human and imperfect.”

“Authors go on writing books, and so we go on reading them. It is a sad state of affairs.”

“Some young ladies meet a man and from there it is all plain sailing, but this is not the usual way it happens.”

“People make one happy, not houses.”