A first sampling of Barbara Pym, from her novel Excellent Women:

I had observed that men usually did not do things unless they liked doing them. (9) 

But it was a women’s program and they all seemed so married and splendid, their lives so full and yet so well organized, that I felt more than usually spinsterish and useless.  (28)

Virtue is an excellent thing and we should all strive after it, but it can sometimes be a little depressing.  (44) 

Perhaps long spaghetti is the kind of thing that ought to be eaten quite alone with no one to watch one’s struggles. Surely many a romance must have been nipped in the bud by sitting opposite someone eating spaghetti? (96)

I told myself that, after all, life is like that for most of us—the small unpleasantnesses rather than the great tragedies; the little useless longings rather than the great renunciations and dramatic love affairs of history or fiction. (101)