In the dissolution of sentimental partnerships it is seldom that both associates are able to withdraw their funds at the same time.

The worst of doing one's duty was that it apparently unfitted one for doing anything else.

Until the raw ingredients of a pudding make a pudding, I shall never believe that the raw material of sensation and thought can make a work of art without the cook's intervening.

The real alchemy consists in being able to turn gold back again into something else; and that's the secret that most of your friends have lost.

Something he knew he had missed: the flower of life. But he thought of it now as a thing so unattainable and improbable that to have repined would have been like despairing because one had not drawn the first prize in a lottery.

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

The American landscape has no foreground and the American mind no background.