This is an important book, the critic assumes, because it deals with war. This is an insignificant book because it deals with the feelings of women in a drawing-room.

• The telephone, which interrupts the most serious conversations and cuts short the most weighty observations, has a romance of its own.
• I can only note that the past is beautiful because one never realises an emotion at the time. It expands later, and thus we don't have complete emotions about the present, only about the past.
• If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.
• Mental fight means thinking against the current, not with it. It is our business to puncture gas bags and discover the seeds of truth.
• It is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top.
• Let a man get up and say, Behold, this is the truth, and instantly I perceive a sandy cat filching a piece of fish in the background. Look, you have forgotten the cat, I say.
• Yet it is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top.
• The truth is, I often like women. I like their unconventionality. I like their completeness. I like their anonymity.
• The connection between dress and war is not far to seek your finest clothes are those you wear as soldiers.
• We can best help you to prevent war not by repeating your words and following your methods but by finding new words and creating new methods.