Mrs. Ballinger is one of the ladies who pursue Culture in bands, as though it were dangerous to meet it alone.

They seemed to come suddenly upon happiness as if they had surprised a butterfly in the winter woods

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

She felt a stealing sense of fatigue as she walked; the sparkle had died out of her, and the taste of life was stale on her lips. She hardly knew what she had been seeking, or why the failure to find it had so blotted the light from her sky: she was only aware of a vague sense of failure, of an inner isolation deeper than the loneliness about her.

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.

Since the Americans have ceased to have dyspepsia, they have lost the only thing that gave them any expression.

Don't you ever mind," she asked suddenly, "not being rich enough to buy all the books you want?