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

Charity, till then, had been conscious only of a vague self-disgust and a frightening physical distress; now, of a sudden, there came to her the grave surprise of motherhood.

Life is either always a tight-rope or a featherbed. Give me a tight-rope.

Through this atmosphere of torrid splendor moved wan beings as richly upholstered as the furniture, beings without definite pursuits or permanent relations, who drifted on a languid tide of curiosity... Somewhere behind them, in the background of their lives there was doubtless a real past, yet they had no more real existence than the poet's shades in limbo.

She was very near hating him now; yet the sound of his voice, the way the light fell on his thin, dark hair, the way he sat and moved and wore his clothes—she was conscious that even these trivial things were inwoven with her deepest life.

I was just a screw or cog in the great machine I called life, and when I dropped out of it I found I was of no use anywhere else.

The air of ideas is the only air worth breathing.