Misfortune had made Lily supple instead of hardening her, and a pliable substance is less easy to break than a stiff one.

Think what stupid things the people must have done with their money who say they're 'happier without'.

Everybody who does anything at all does too much.

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.

Her vivid smile was like a light held up to dazzle me.

The real marriage of true minds is for any two people to possess a sense of humor or irony pitched in exactly the same key, so that their joint glances on any subject cross like interarching searchlights.

... even in houses commonly held to be 'booky' one finds, nine times out of ten, not a library but a book-dump.