She wondered if, when human souls try to get too near each other, they do not inevitably become mere blurs to each other's vision.

Damn words; they're just the pots and pans of life, the pails and scrubbing-brushes. I wish I didn't have to think in words.

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.

Why do we call all our generous ideas illusions, and the mean ones truths?

I think sometimes that it is almost a pity to enjoy Italy as much as I do, because the acuteness of my sensations makes them rather exhausting; but when I see the stupid Italians I have met here, completely insensitive to their surroundings, and ignorant of the treasures of art and history among which they have grown up, I begin to think it is better to be an American, and bring to it all a mind and eye unblunted by custom.

The air of ideas is the only air worth breathing.

It was harder to drown at sunrise than in darkness.