My first few weeks in America are always miserable, because the tastes I am cursed with are all of a kind that cannot be gratified here, and I am not enough in sympathy with our gross public to make up for the lack on the aesthetic side. One's friends are delightful; but we are none of us Americans, we don't think or feel as the Americans do, we are the wretched exotics produced in a European glass-house, the most displaced and useless class on earth!

Her vivid smile was like a light held up to dazzle me.

It is so easy for a woman to become what the man she loves believes her to be

Their long years together had shown him that it did not so much matter if marriage was a dull duty, as long as it kept the dignity of duty: lapsing from that, it became a mere battle of ugly appetites.

whatever the uses of a room, they are seriously interfered with if it be not preserved as a world by itself.

But marriage is one long sacrifice.... Chapter 21, Medora Manson speaking to Newland Archer

There are two ways to spread happiness; either be the light who shines it or be the mirror who reflects it.