Once more it was borne in on him that marriage was not the safe anchorage he had been taught to think, but a voyage on uncharted seas.

As he paid the hansom and followed his wife's long train into the house he took refuge in the comforting platitude that the first six months were always the most difficult in marriage. 'After that I suppose we shall have pretty nearly finished rubbing off each other’s angles,' he reflected; but the worst of it was that May's pressure was already bearing on the very angles whose sharpness he most wanted to keep

It frightened him to think what must have gone to the making of her eyes.

There is someone I must say goodbye to. Oh, not you - we are sure to see each other again - but the Lily Bart you knew. I have kept her with me all this time, but now we are going to part, and I have brought her back to you - I am going to leave her here. When I go out presently she will not go with me. I shall like to think that she has stayed with you.

My last page is always latent in my first; but the intervening windings of the way become clear only as I write.

there are lots of ways of answering a letter - and writing doesn't happen to be mine.

Most timidities have such secret compensations and Miss Bart was discerning enough to know that the inner vanity is generally in proportion to the outer self depreciation.