The real alchemy consists in being able to turn gold back again into something else; and that's the secret that most of your friends have lost.

What a shame it is for a nation to be developing without a sense of beauty, and eating bananas for breakfast.

There is too much sour grapes for my taste in the present American attitude. The time to denounce the bankers was when we were all feeding off their gold plate; not now! At present they have not only my sympathy but my preference. They are the last representatives of our native industries.

Archer was too intelligent to think that a young woman like Ellen Olenska would necessarily recoil from everything that reminded her of her past. She might believe herself wholly in revolt against it; but what had charmed her in it would still charm her even though it were against her will.

...and wondering where he had read that clever liars give details, but that the cleverest do not.

[B]ut he had lived in a world in which, as he said, no one who loved ideas need hunger mentally.

He knelt by the bed and bent over her, draining their last moment to its lees; and in the silence there passed between them the word which made all clear.