If she let herself go it was better.

“Yes, of course, if it’s fine tomorrow,” said Mrs. Ramsay.

If you think the logs are stolen, take your stuff and get out.

If you call me Doc once again, I’ll knock your eye teeth down your throat.

If no one came for them they would be left to waterlog and rot on the beach.

“If you see Nick, dear, will you tell him his mother wants to see him?” his wife said.

“If you think the logs are stolen, leave them alone and take your tools back to the camp,” the doctor said.

All my aunts and uncles talked it over as if they were choosing a prep school for me, and finally said, “Why⁠—ye-es,” with very grave, hesitant faces.

When she looked at them they didn’t seem to be moving at all but if she went in and dried some more dishes and then came out again they would be out of sight beyond the point.

I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parcelled out unequally at birth.

Liz wanted to make something special for Jim to take but she didn’t finally because she was afraid to ask Mrs. Smith for the eggs and flour and afraid if she bought them Mrs. Smith would catch her cooking.

To her son these words conveyed an extraordinary joy, as if it were settled the expedition were bound to take place, and the wonder to which he had looked forward, for years and years it seemed, was, after a night’s darkness and a day’s sail, within touch.

If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away.

They had drifted up onto the beach and if nothing were done about them sooner or later the crew of the Magic would come along the shore in a rowboat, spot the logs, drive an iron spike with a ring on it into the end of each one and then tow them out into the lake to make a new boom.