“And after all, everyone needs a few flaws to make them real.”

“She looked at him and he read in her eyes a disappointment that he should have stooped to the dead relative excuse. Yet he was as entitled as the next man to use it. People did it all the time; it was understood that there was a defined window of availability beginning a decent few days after a funeral and continuing for no more than a couple of months. Of course, some people took dreadful advantage and a year later were still hauling around their dead relatives on their backs, showing them off to explain late tax payments and missed dentist appointments: something he would never do.”

“I believe there is a great deal too much mutual confession going on today, as if sharing one’s problems somehow makes them go away. All it really does, of course, is increase the number of people who have to worry about a particular issue.”

“The world is full of small ignorances. We must all do our best to ignore them and thereby keep them small, don't you think”

“I am not loitering" said the Major. "I am simply indulging in a few moments of pastoral solitude"...”

“Look here, it's all very tidy and convenient to see the world in black and white.....It's a particular passion of young men eager to sweep away their dusty elders. However, philosophical rigidity is usually combined with a complete lack of education or real-world experience, and it is often augmented with strange haircuts and an aversion to bathing.”

“We are all small-minded people, creeping about the earth grubbing for our own advantage and making the very mistakes for which we want to humiliate our neighbors.”