The Silence of Colonel Bramble by André Maurois

'A gentleman is never in a hurry.'

'To desire to be perpetually in the society of a pretty woman until the end of one's days, is as if, because one likes good wine, one wished always to have one's mouth full of it.' 

'He who has found a good wife has found great happiness, but a quarrelsome woman is like a roof that lets in the rain.'

'We don't go to school to learn, but to be soaked in the prejudices of our class, without which we should be useless and unhappy.'

I have picked up and am rereading a book I loved at 12, The Silence of Colonel Bramble by André Maurois. (We had to translate a passage in a French lesson at school and then I found it in a 2nd hand bookshop). It is so funny and beautiful, so touching, but whereas the hierarchical virile aristocratic England of 1914 seemed outdated in 1974 now it seems so utterly dead. I feel like I want to cry for what we have lost.

The book is available for free here.