I am glad it cannot happen twice, the fever of first love. For it is a fever, and a burden, too, whatever the poets may say.

here was a silence between them for a moment, and she wondered if all women, when in love, were torn between two impulses, a longing to throw modesty and reserve to the winds and confess everything, and an equal determination to conceal the love forever, to be cool, aloof, utterly detached, to die rather than admit a thing so personal, so intimate.

Life was a series of greetings and farewells, one was always saying good-bye to something, to someone.

Happiness is not a possession to be prized, it is a quality of thought, a state of mind.

Jem was safe from her, and he would ride away with a song on his lips and a laugh at her expense, forgetful of her, and of his brother, and of God; while she dragged through the years, sullen and bitter, the stain of silence marking her, coming in the end to ridicule as a soured spinster who had been kissed once in her life and could not forget it.

People who mattered could not take the humdrum world. But this was not the world, it was enchantment; and all of it was mine.

How simple life becomes when things like mirrors are forgotten.