I shan't be lonely now. I was lonely; I was afraid. But the emptiness and the darkness are gone; when I turn back into myself now I'm like a child going at night into a room where there's always a light.

Most timidities have such secret compensations and Miss Bart was discerning enough to know that the inner vanity is generally in proportion to the outer self depreciation.

After all, one knows one's weak points so well, that it's rather bewildering to have the critics overlook them and invent others.

Ah, good conversation - there's nothing like it, is there? The air of ideas is the only air worth breathing.

In reality they all lived in a kind of hieroglyphic world, where the real thing was never said or done or even thought, but only represented by a set of arbitrary signs.

Genius is of small use to a woman who does not know how to do her hair.

He knelt by the bed and bent over her, draining their last moment to its lees; and in the silence there passed between them the word which made all clear.