There are moments when one has to choose between living one's own life fully, entirely, completely, or dragging out some false, shallow, degrading existence that the world in its hypocrisy demands. When one is in town one amuses oneself. When one is in the country one amuses other people. It is excessively boring. Romance is the privilege of the rich, not the profession of the unemployed. The poor should be practical and prosaic. An acquaintance that begins with a compliment is sure to develop into a real friendship. It starts in the right manner. The truths of metaphysics are the truths of masks. Science can never grapple with the irrational. That is why it has no future before it in this world. The happy people of the world have their value, but only the negative value of foils. They throw up and emphasise the beauty and the fascination of the unhappy. In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it. The last is much the worst--the last is a real tragedy. Disobedience in the eyes of anyone who has read history is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made--through disobedience and rebellion. It is not wise to find symbols in everything that one sees. It makes life too full of terrors. Comfort is the only thing our civilisation can give us. Politics are my only pleasure. You see nowadays it is not fashionable to flirt till one is forty or to be romantic till one is forty-five, so we poor women who are under thirty, or say we are, have nothing open to us but politics or philanthropy. And philanthropy seems to me to have become simply the refuge of people who wish to annoy their fellow-creatures. I prefer politics. I think they are more ... becoming. One's past is what one is. It is the only way by which people should be judged. In a very ugly and sensible age the arts borrow, not from life, but from each other. It is always a silly thing to give advice, but to give good advice is fatal. Secrets from other people's wives are a necessary luxury in modern life. So, at least, I am told at the club by people who are bald enough to know better. But no man should have a secret from his own wife. She invariably finds it out. Women have a wonderful instinct about things. They discover everything except the obvious. Life holds the mirror up to art, and either reproduces some strange type imagined by painter or sculptor or realises in fact what has been dreamed in fiction. I feel sure that if I lived in the country for six months I should become so unsophisticated that no one would take the slightest notice of me. To recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less. A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it. I am always saying what I shouldn't say; in fact, I usually say what I really think--a great mistake nowadays. It makes one so liable to be misunderstood.