He built up a situation that was far enough from the truth. It never occurred to him that Helen was to blame. He forgot the intensity of their talk, the charm that had been lent him by sincerity, the magic of Oniton under darkness and of the whispering river. Helen loved the absolute. Leonard had been ruined absolutely, and had appeared to her as a man apart, isolated from the world. A real man, who cared for adventure and beauty, who desired to live decently and pay his way, who could have travelled more gloriously through life than the Juggernaut car that was crushing him.

Pity wraps the student of the past in an ambrosial cloud, and washes his limbs with eternal youth.

Life is easy to chronicle, but bewildering to practice.

There are occasions when I would rather feel like a fly than a spider.

The bully and his victim never quite forget their first relations.

“It is Fate that I am here,” persisted George. “But you can call it Italy if it makes you less unhappy.”

People in a novel can be understood completely by the reader, if the novelist can be understood completely by the reader, if the novelist wishes; their inner as well as their outer life can be exposed.