1. Repentance is the duster with which we sop up the spilt milk. It serves its estimable purpose but is nothing but a damp rag afterwards to be thrown into the soiled linen bag.

2. Love is the germ – passion the disease.

3. Take Regret as your mistress but never make her your wife. For she will hang about your neck and twine her arms around your body, and she is heavy to hold as the dead are heavy. Take Regret as your mistress but never make her your wife – for her body is salt to taste with the tears of a thousand lovers and her womb is barren.

4. If a man bore in mind the fact that when he chose his wife his wife also chose him, there would be less talk of the equality of the sexes and more realisation.

5. The average Englishwoman imagines that every Frenchman is a devil – with his horns only half concealed under an opera hat.

6. If you wish to live you must first attend your own funeral.

7. People are charmingly conservative. The story of the Garden of Eden is practically the only plot to fill and refill out West End theatres and the pages of our magazines… . Domestic felicity destroyed by a twentieth-century serpent in an embroidered shirt front and that dangerous little gift which Eve … hands to her husband.

8. Before confessing be perfectly certain that you do not wish to be forgiven.

9. I keep the God of my childhood hanging around my neck by a string, like a little camphor bag – an old-fashioned remedy for warding off infectious and dangerous complaints. Of course there is one disadvantage … when I wear evening dress … it is impossible. Most women do the same – that is why men find my sex so far more vulnerable when they are decollete.

10. Enough for the Present – yet they say no woman is ever satisfied – yet she does not wish you to give her a Past.

11. Life's a game of cards – which mainly consists of shuffling.

12. It took a woman to realise the fact that the greatness of great men depends mainly upon the length of their hair.

13. Easy enough to strike a match – but it requires experience to keep a fire burning.