Margaret Halsey

“The only graceful way to accept an insult is to ignore it; if you can't ignore it, top it; if you can't top it, laugh at it; if you can't laugh at it, it's probably deserved.”

“The English have an extraordinary ability for flying into a great calm.”

“My husband and I have never considered divorce... murder sometimes, but never divorce.”

“The people who are garrulous and wear their hearts on their sleeves and tell you everything are the secret-keepers, when you get right down to it.”

“Some of my best friends are illusions.”

“One of the less dismaying aspects of race relations in the United States is that their improvement is not a matter of a few people having a great deal of courage. It is a matter of a great many people having just a little courage.”

“If I were a man, I would strenuously object to the assumption that women have any moral or spiritual superiority as a class.”

“The necessity for being still more dishonest than you are has a brutalizing effect.”

“English life is nothing but anarchy, with a police force to keep it in check.”

“The art of being a good guest is to know when to leave.”

“One of the virtues of being very young is that you don't let the facts get in the way of your imagination.”

“The length of a conversation is in inverse proportion to the rarity of the subject.”