And Ladies of the Club

In a way, looking back, it seemed a long, long time since she had been eighteen, but in another way her memories were so clear and vivid that it seemed like yesterday. Time was an accordion, all the air squeezed out of it as you grew old. And how strange that in your mind you did not feel any older. You were the same person, but where had the years gone?

But surely, if you trust God, you can believe the bad moments pass, and the good memories are worth enough.

She was moved to a profound but pleasurable melancholy by the evidence that human life is brief and long survived by the material things it had believed itself to possess.

But Calvinists have never been pacifists: they have always been all too ready for a fight.

When we get presidents with brains it's purely by accident. Who was ever selected for his brains? We choose them for other qualities, or because they can be elected.