It Was A Book To Kill Time

You Should Always Believe What You Read In The Newspapers, For That Makes Them More Interesting.

Every Year, In The Deep Midwinter, There Descends Upon This World A Terrible Fortnight. ... Every Shop Is A Choked Mass Of Humanity ... Nerves Are Jangled And Frayed, Purses Emptied To No Purposes, All Amusements And All Occupations Suspended In Favor Of Frightful Businesses With Brown Paper, String, Letters, Cards, Stamps, And Crammed Post Offices. This Period Is Doubtless A Foretaste Of Whatever Purgatory Lies In Store For Human Creatures.

They... Threw Themselves Into The Interests Of The Rest, But Each Plowed His Or Her Own Furrow. Their Thoughts, Their Little Passions And Hopes And Desires, All Ran Along Separate Lines. Family Life Is Like This - Animated, But Collateral.

As To The Family, I Have Never Understood How That Fits In With The Other Ideals --or, Indeed, Why It Should Be An Ideal At All. A Group Of Closely Related Persons Living Under One Roof; It Is A Convenience, Often A Necessity, Sometimes A Pleasure, Sometimes The Reverse; But Who First Exalted It As Admirable, An Almost Religious Ideal?

[religion Is A] Primitive Insurance Against Disaster. ... Originally Religion Was Merely A Function Of The Self-preservative Instinct. Offer Sacrifices To The Gods And Save Your Crops. And Even Christianity, After All, Insures Heavily Against The Flaws In This Life By Belief In Another.