In Australia, not reading poetry is the national pastime.

Gossip is the tool of the poet, the shoptalk of the scientist and the consolation of the housewife, wit, tycoon and intellectual. It begins in the nursery and ends when speech is past.

Those wearing tolerance for a label call other views intolerable.

Gossip isn't scandal and it's not merely malicious. It's chatter about the human race by lovers of the same.

Sin has always been an ugly word, but it has been made so in a new sense over the last half-century. It has been made not only ugly but passé. People are no longer sinful, they are only immature or underprivileged or frightened or, more particularly, sick.

Frigidity is largely nonsense. It is this generation's catchword, one only vaguely understood and constantly misused. Frigid women are few. There is a host of diffident and slow-ripening ones.

The thing to remember about fathers is, they're men. A girl has to keep it in mind: They are dragon-seekers, bent on improbable rescues. Scratch any father, you find someone chock-full of qualms and romantic terrors, believing change is a threat -- like your first shoes with heels on, like your first bicycle I it took such months to get.

Compromise, if not the spice of life, is its solidity. It is what makes nations great and marriages happy.

A hobby a day keeps the doldrums away.

Getting along with men isn't what's truly important. The vital knowledge is how to get along with one man.