She threw back her head with a laugh that made her chins ripple like little waves.

There are moments when a man's imagination, so easily subdued to what it lives in, suddenly rises above its daily level and surveys the long windings of destiny.

But marriage is one long sacrifice.... Chapter 21, Medora Manson speaking to Newland Archer

...and wondering where he had read that clever liars give details, but that the cleverest do not.

And I wonder, among all the tangles of this mortal coil, which one contains tighter knots to undo, & consequently suggests more tugging, & pain, & diversified elements of misery, than the marriage tie.

I think I like 'em better like that...divinely dull...just the quiet bearers of their own beauty, like the priestesses in a Panathenaic procession.

Only the fact that we are unaware how well our nearest know us enables us to live with them.