things-as-they-were

Updated: May 20, 2025

The Cabinets, like naughty children, were again dangling their feet over the edge; but the whole incalculable weight of things-as-they-were, of the daily necessary business of living, continued calmly and convincingly to assert itself against the bandying of diplomatic words.

Edith Wharton - Fighting France, from Dunkerque to Belfort