She was one of those women who are usually referred to in the past tense, of whom one says: ‘She had a certain freshness and bloom about her,’ and whose freshness and bloom passed unnoticed even when she still had them.

The desire for carnal possession quickly cools, whereas the desire to own land never quits the heart of man.

Since the damage was so small, people were more inclined to laugh that Cudoine should have his ugly mug bashed in. No one had any particular grievance against him, but there was a town major's manner about him that was rather irritating. He looked too pleased with himself, and at Clochemerle this was not popular.

At Clochemerle, the greater number of the men put up with their wives, and the great majority of the women with their husbands. If this hardly amounted to adoration, in the majority of homes at any rate the men and women found each other very nearly endurable.

It is something of a tragedy for young girls of good family that they cannot carry on a love-affair in a simple, straightforward way, in secret, below their station if need be, as do their sisters of humbler origin, who can place their affections wherever they wish without risk of misdirecting a family fortune or making a 'bad match'.

...the schoolmaster was one of those men for whom virtuous indignation was a necessity.

I had been astonished to find myself in the middle of the war yet not be able to find it, unable to accept that in fact the war consisted precisely of this stasis.

In short, the war got off to a pretty good start, with the help of chaos.

She was one of those women who are usually referred to in the past tense, of whom one says: 'She had a certain freshness and bloom about her,' and whose freshness and bloom passed unnoticed even when she still had them.

It was true that the elders found everything changing all about them with a precipitation which was leaving them stripped of authority. The girls (kids they remembered no bigger than that) suddenly flowered and married. The lads returned from their military service with blasé airs and a new vocabulary. A horde of new brats was born, making their disprespectful uproar in Clochemerle.