Charity, till then, had been conscious only of a vague self-disgust and a frightening physical distress; now, of a sudden, there came to her the grave surprise of motherhood.

Archer had always been inclined to think that chance and circumstance played a small part in shaping people's lots compared with their innate tendency to have things happen to them.

It must be less wicked to love the wrong person than not to love anybody at all.

I begin to see what marriage is for. It's to keep people away from each other. Sometimes I think that two people who love each other can be saved from madness only by the things that come between them - children, duties, visits, bores, relations - the things that protect married people from each other.

In the rotation of crops there was a recognized season for wild oats; but they were not sown more than once.

There are moments when a man's imagination, so easily subdued to what it lives in, suddenly rises above its daily level and surveys the long windings of destiny.

I don't know that I should care for a man who made life easy; I should want some one who made it interesting.