England in 3400 AD

Swan Song (John Galsworthy)

Soames goes to Dorking to see the old family homestead, the origination of the modern Forsytes, and reflects upon the future:

"He had read somewhere that people would live underground, and come up to take the air in their flying machines on Sundays."

And it continues...

"People that wrote those prophetic articles were always forgetting that people had passions. He would make a bet that the passions of the English in 3400 A.D. would still be: playing golf, cursing the weather, sitting in draughts, and revising the prayer-book."

Soames on America

Swan Song (John Galsworthy)

Soames Forsyte visits New York and his impression is essentially favorable, except for one thing:

"Of course the place was full of Americans, but that was unavoidable."

Soames's view of psycho-analysis

The White Monkey (John Galsworthy)

"There was a thing they called psycho-analysis, which so far as he could understand attributed people's action not to what they ate at breakfast, or the leg they got out of bed with, as in the good old days, but to some shock they had received in the remote past and entirely forgotten."