Apart from the pleasure of looking at her and listening to her-of enjoying in her what others less discriminatingly but as liberally appreciated-he had the sense, between himself and her, of a kind of free-masonry of precocious tolerance and irony. They had both, in early youth, taken the measure of the world they happened to live in: they knew just what it was worth to them and for what reasons, and the community of these reasons lent to their intimacy its last exquisite touch.

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

We can't behave like people in novels, though, can we?

Almost everybody in the neighborhood had troubles, frankly localized and specified; but only the chosen had complications. To have them was in itself a distinction, though it was also, in most cases, a death warrant. People struggled on for years wit

One cares so little for the style in which one's praises are written.

The only thing to do is to hug one's friends tight and do one's job.

There was no use in trying to emancipate a wife who had not the dimmest notion that she was not free.