They are all alike you know. They hold their tongues for years and you think you're safe, but when the opportunity comes they remember everything.

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

Mothers and daughters are part of each other's consciousness, in different degrees and in a different way, but still with the mutual sense of something which has always been there. A real mother is just a habit of thought to her children.

..but it seemed to him that the tie between husband and wife, if breakable in prosperity, should be indissoluble in misfortune.

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

... there are spines to which the immobility of worship is not a strain.

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