The secret of happiness ... is to be in harmony with existence, to be always calm, always lucid, always willing "to be joined to the universe without being more conscious of it than an idiot," to let each wave of life wash us a little farther up the shore.
In the sex-war, thoughtlessness is a weapon of the male, vindictiveness of the female. Both are reciprocally generated, but a woman's desire for revenge outlasts all other emotion. Yet when every unkind word about women has been said, we have still to admit, with Byron, that they are nicer than men. They are more devoted, more unselfish and more emotionally sincere. When the long fuse of cruelty, deceit and revenge is set alight, it is male thoughtlessness which has fired it.