traditions that have lost their meaning are the hardest of all to destroy.

But after a moment a sense of waste and ruin overcame him. There they were, close together and safe and shut in; yet so chained to their separate destinies that they might as well been half the world apart.

Genius is of small use to a woman who does not know how to do her hair.

Beauty (was)a gift which, in the eyes of New York, justified every success, and excused a certain number of failings.

I despair of the Republic! Such dreariness, such whining sallow women, such utter absence of the amenities, such crass food, crass manners, crass landscape!! What a horror it is for a whole nation to be developing without the sense of beauty, and eating bananas for breakfast.

You thought I was a lovelorn mistress; and I was only an expensive prostitute.

I had the story, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different story.