The visible world is a daily miracle for those who have eyes and ears; and I still warm hands thankfully at the old fire, though every year it is fed with the dry wood of more old memories.

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

whatever the uses of a room, they are seriously interfered with if it be not preserved as a world by itself.

They seemed to come suddenly upon happiness as if they had surprised a butterfly in the winter woods

The essence of taste is suitability. Divest the word of its prim and priggish implications, and see how it expresses the mysterious demand of the eye and mind for symmetry, harmony and order.

Our blindest impulses become evidence of perspicacity when they fall in with the course of events.

Don't they always go from bad to worse? There's no turning back--your old self rejects you, and shuts you out. ~Lilly Bart